Epochs of Modern History 

EDITED BY 
EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A., J. SURTEES PHILLPOTTS, B.C.L. 

AND 

C. COLBECK, M.A. 



THE EPOCH OF REFORM, 1830-30 



JUSTIN McCarthy, m. p. 



Epochs of Modern History 



THE 



EPOCH OF REFORM^ 

1830-1850 



/\^ BY 

\ \ 

JUSTIN McCarthy, m.r 

AUTHOR OF "a history OF OUR OWN TIMES* 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIENER'S SONS 






^ imt 



PREFACE. 



The object of this little book is, in the first instance, 
to give a clear and concise account of the changes in 
our political system, from the introduction of Lord 
Grey's first Reform Bill to the death of Sir Robert 
Peel. That epoch of Reform encloses a group of 
constitutional changes so important as to entitle it to 
a distinct place in the history of England. Lord 
Grey's Reform Bill estatlislfed^e basis of a popular 
suffrage, gave representajipiV'to the great industrial 
towns, and abolished many old standing anomalies and 
sources of corruption. The tithe system was brought 
to an end in Ireland. Slavery was banished from our 
colonies for ever. The working of women and 
children in mines and factories was placed under 
wholesome regulation. The foundation of a system 
of national education was laid. Our penal code was 
made human and reasonable. The corn laws were 
repealed. These changes, and others hardly less 
important, are the birth of that marvellous period of 
political activity. Moreover, during this epoch of 
Reform the relations of the Sovereign to Parliament, 



vi Preface. 

and of Parliament to the People, "were established on a 
well defined and satisfactory principle. 

The manner in which all these changes were 
brought about is a lesson of the deepest political 
interest to every student. I have been especially 
anxious to show how the policy which opens the way 
to Reform is the true antidote to the spirit of Revolu- 
tion. Some of the grievances under which the 
English people suffered before this epoch of Reform 
were severe enough to have warranted an attempt at 
Revolution, if no other means of relief seemed attain- 
able, and if that desperate remedy had some chance 
of success. Revolution, however, was avoided in 
England because English statesmen had learnt the 
wisdom which statesmen on the Continent had not 
acquired — the wisdom which teaches a Minister when 
to make his own opinions and prejudices give way 
before the pressure of evidence and experience, and 
of opinions that have not yet become his own. That 
was the wisdom which English Ministers during that 
epoch proved themselves especially to possess. They 
were not for the most part men of great intellect or 
political genius. Some of the continental statesmen 
whose mistakes and perversity brought misfortune on 
their country were men of higher intellectual grasp than 
some of the English Ministers whose shrewd sound 
judgment saved England from the peril of Revolution. 
But themanner in which England was governed during 



Preface. vii 

the period I have described, made it evident to all 
that every change in our political system needed for 
the good of the nation can be obtained by the patient 
and persistent use of argument and of reason, without 
any thought of an ultimate appeal to force. This, in 
itself, is the true principle of political freedom. 

I have endeavoured to give my readers something 
like a picture of each leading public man on both 
sides of politics during this epoch of Reform. The 
more vividly we can form an impression as to the 
appearance, the bearing, and the personal peculiarities 
of a statesman, the more likely are we to understand 
the part he took in public affairs, and the purposes 
and principles which inspired him. The National 
Portrait Gallery in London is a valuable instructor 
even to the profoundest student of English history. 
No period of equal length in that history encloses a 
greater number of remarkable figures than the states- 
men, orators, and politicians from Lord Grey, Lord 
John Russell, and O'Connell, to Sir Robert Peel, 
Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Cobden. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

1815. State of Europe after the Peace of Paris and events 

leading to Reform or Revolution 5 

The Holy Alliance of Austria, Russia, and Prussia . . 9 

England under Lord Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh . 11 

Repression of popular agitation 16 

1817-19. The Blanketeers. Peterloo, Orator Hunt 16 

1822. Change of policy with Canning's accession to power . 11 

1824. Recognition of the South American Republics .... 11 

1826. Struggle of Greece for independence. The Great 

Powers intervene ii 

1827. Battle of Navarino 12 

1828. Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts a 

1829. Catholic Emancipation Act S2 

Progress of the agitation for Reform. Its leaders . , 25 

1830. Revolution in France. Charles X. abdicates 42 

Death of George IV. Election of a new Parliament . 38 

October 26. Parliament meets. The Duke of Wellington and 
the Government declare against Reform and are 

forced to resign 43 

Lord Grey's Reform Ministry 46 

1831. March i. Lord John Russell introduces the Reform Bill 50 
March 21. Second reading of the Bill carried by 302 to 301 . 60 

The Gascoigne amendment. Lord Grey appeals to the 

country 61 



X Contents, 

FAGB 

June 24. Reform Bill introduced into the new Parliament. 

Prolonged debates in Committee 63 

1831, August 18. Chandos clause 66 

September 22. The Bill finally passes the Commons by 345 

to 239, and goes up to the Lords, who throw it out on 

second reading 67 

Excitement in the country ; 69 

December 6. Parliament reassembles 72 

March 23. Third Reform Bill passes the Commons 73 

Position of the Lords. The ' Waverers ' 73 

Lord Lyndhurst's motion. Resignation of Lord Grey. 

The Duke of Wellington cannot form a Ministry. 

The King consents to the creation of New Peers and 

the Lords give way 75 

June 4. The Bill passes the Lords and receives the King's 

assent a few days later 76 

1833. Emancipation of the West Indian slaves 83 

Lord Stanley's resolutions 86 

The trade of India thrown open to the world .... 93 

Lord Ashley's Factory Act 94 

Poor Law Reform 124 

The Irish Tithe War 98 

1834. Mr. Ward's motion on the Irish Church 104 

Resignations in the Ministry. Commission appointed 

to report upon the Irish Church no 

Lord Grey resigns and is succeeded by LordMelbourne. 

The King dismisses his Ministers 117 

Sir Robert Peel's first Administration 118 

1835. June 26. Peel defeated on Lord John Russell's Resolution 

on the Irish Church. Lord Melbourne returns to 
office. Irish Tithe" Bill, which was finally passed by 

Lord John Russell in 1838 119 

Municipal Corporations reformed. Lord John Russell's 
Bill passed September 7 130 

1837. Death of William IV. Accession of Queen Victoria . 139 

1838. Separation of Hanover from England 141 

Anti-Corn Law League formed 179 



Contents, xi 

FAGB 

1832-37. Mitigation of the Criminal Laws 144 

1837, Electric Telegraph invented 161 

1839. State grant in aid of National Education increased, and 

henceforward managed by a Committee of the Privy 

Council 143 

Alteration of the Convict Laws 147 

Abolition of the Press Gang for the Navy 151 

1840. January i. Sir Rowland Hill's Penny Postage adopted . 153 
March 3. The Publication of Parliamentary Debates pro- 
tected against actions for libel 162 

1841. Lord Melbourne resigns. Sir Robert Peel's second 

Administration 181 

Agitation for Repeal of the Com Laws. The Free 
Trade controversy 181 

1845. Irish Education. Queen's Colleges. Opposition of Sir 

Robert Inglis. Establishment of the Irish Board of 
National Education . 167 

Famine in Ireland brings the agitation for Free Trade 
to a head. History of the Corn Laws. Bright, 
Cobden, Villiers 17S-81 

Dissensions in the Cabinet. Lord John Russell's letter 
to the Electors of London 184 

Peel is deserted by some of his colleagues and resigns . 186 

Lord John Russell fails to form a Ministry and Peel 
returns to office 186 

1846, January 22. A new Parliament meets. Sir Robert 

Peel declares va. favour of Free Trade. Protectionist 
party of Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Disraeli . 186 
May 15. Repeal of the Corn Laws passes the Commons . . . 187 
June 27.* The Bill passes the Lords. Peel's Ministry over- 
thrown in the Commons on the Irish Coercion Bill. 

Lord John Russell's first Administration 188 

Triumph of Free Trade 189 

1849. Repeal of the Navigation Laws 192 

Agitation for further reform. Chartism. The Six Points 

of the Charter. Charter riots at Newport 195 

O'Connell's agitation for the Repeal of the Union . . 196 



xii Contents, 

PAGB 

He is prosecuted for seditious speaking, but his con- 
demnation is reversed by the Lords. The Young 

Ireland Confederation 200 

Revolutions on the Continent . 200 

1848. Fall of the Guizot Ministry in France 201 

Dethronement of Louis Philippe 201 

Popular rising in Austria 202 

Republic proclaimed in Venice 202 

Pius IX. in exile at Gaeta. A Republic at Rome. 

Mazzini 202 

Hungarian revolts. Kossuth 203 

March 23. Defeat of Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, at the 

head of the Italians at Novara 203 

April 12. France restores the Pope to Rome 203 

In England Chartism ends and the Young Ireland party 

is broken up 204 

Reform triumphs over Revolution 205 

1850, July 2. Death of Sir Robert Peel 205 

A Survey, Political and Social 208 



Xlll 



PRIME MINISTERS, 1830—1850. 

Duke of Wellington Jan. 25, 1828 to Nov. 22, 1830. 

Earl Grey Nov. 22, 1830 *' July 18, 1834. 

Lord Melbourne July 18, 1834 " Dec. 26, 1834. 

Sir Robert Peel Dec. 26, 1834 " April 18, 1835. 

Lord Melbourne April 18, 1835 " Sept. 6, 1841. 

Sir Robert Peel Sept. 6, 1841 " July 6, 1846, 

Lord John Russell July 6, 1846 " Feb. 24, 1851. 



ADMINISTRA TIONS, 1830—1830. 

I. 1828. DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S MINISTRY. 

Prime Minister Duke of Wellington. 

Lord Chancellor Lord Lyndhurst. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer . . Mr. H. Goulbum. 

Home Secretary Sir R. Peel. 

Foreign " Lord Aberdeen. 

Colonial '' Sir George Murray. 

Secretary of War Sir Henry Hardinge. 

First Lord of the Admiralty . . Lord Melville, succeeded by Sir 

James Graham. 

2. 1830. THE REFORM MINISTRY. 

Prime Minister Earl Grey. 

Lord Chancellor Lord Brougham. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer . . Lord Althorp. 
Home Secretary Lord Melbourne. 



XIV 

Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston. 

Colonial Secretary Lord Goderich, afterwards Mr. 

Stanley. 
Secretary of War Mr. C. N. W. Wynn, not in the 

Cabinet. 
First Lord of the Admiralty . . Sir. J. R. Graham. 

Lord John Russell was Paymaster of the Forces but not in the 
Cabinet. 

Mr. Stanley and Sir James Graham resigned office in 1834 upon 
the Irish Church question, and were succeeded by Mr. Spfing Rice 
and Lord Auckland. 

In July, 1834, Earl Grey retired and Lord Melbourne suc- 
ceeded him : the rest of the Ministers remamed in office : Lord 
Duncannon became Home Secretary in place of Lord Melbourne. 

4. 1834. SIR R. PEEL'S FIRST MINISTRY. 

Prime Minister Sir R. Peel. 

Lord Chancellor Lord Lyndhurst. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer . . Sir R. Peel. 

Home Secretary Mr. H. Goulburn, 

Foreign " Duke of Wellington. 

Colonial " Earl of Aberdeen. 

Secretary of War Lord Wharncliffe. 

In this Ministry Mr. W. E. Gladstone was Under-Secretary for 
the Colonies. 

5. 1834. LORD MELBOURNE'S SECOND MINISTRY. 

Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. 

Lord Chancellor In commission, afterwards Lord 

Cottenham. 
Chancellor of the Exchequer . . Mr. Spring Rice. 
Home Secretary ....... Lord John Russell. 

Foreign " Lord Palmerston. 

Colonial " Mr. Grant. 

Secretary of War Lord Howick. 

First Lord of the Admiralty . . Lord Auckland. 



XV 

Later Lord J. Russell became Colonial Secretary, Mr. Spring 
Rice entered the Upper House as Lord MoTiteagle, and was suc- 
ceeded as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Mr. Baring : Lord 
Howick was succeeded at the War Office by Mr. Macaulay. 

6. 1841. SIR R. PEEL'S SECOND MINISTRY. 

Prime Minister Sir R. Peel. 

Lord Chancellor Lord Lyndhurst. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer . . Mr. Goulburn. 

Home Secretary . Sir James Graham. 

Foreign " Lord Aberdeen. 

Colonial " Lord Stanley. 

Secretary of War Sir Henry Hardinge. 

First Lord of the Admiralty . . Lord Haddington. 
President of the Board of 

Trade Earl Ripon, afterwards Mr. Glad- 
stone. 
Without office but in the 

Cabinet Duke of Wellington. 

7. 1846. LORD J. RUSSELL'S FIRST MINISTRY. 

Prime Minister Lord J. Russell. 

Lord Chancellor Lord Cottenham. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer . . Mr. C. Wood. 

Home Secretary Sir G. Grey. 

Foreign " Lord Palmerston. 

Colonial " Earl Grey (Lord Howick). 

First Lord of the Admiralty . . Lord Auckland. 

Paymaster- General Mr. Macaulay. 

President of the Board of 
Trade Earl of Clarendon. 



THE EPOCH OF REFORM. 

1830-1850. 



CHAPTER I 

REFORM AND REVOLUTION. 

The epoch of Reform in England is the period of transi- 
tion during which the representative system in Parlia- 
ment and the constitutional system in Monarchy became 
settled institutions. The representative principle in 
Parliamentary Government is that which secures to the 
people the right of freely choosing an adequate number 
of men to speak for them in the House of Commons. 
The constitutional principle in Monarchy is that which 
requires the sovereign to act on the advice of his minis- 
ters, who are themselves responsible to Parliament, and 
not to attempt to govern the country according to his 
own notions and his own will. The epoch of Reform in 
England coincides very nearly with the epoch of revolu- 
tion on the Continent of Europe. Where such reforms 
as those which took place in England are resisted by the 
force of arbitrary government, the natural result is revo- 
lution. As the intelligence of a people develops, and 
education spreads, there grows up among them a convic- 
tion that "the common sense of all," as Mr. Tennyson 
describes it, is better able to take care of the common 
interest than the arbitrary judgment of any sovereign or 

B 



2 Rieform and Revolution. 1830 

statesman, however sagacious and well-meaning. A 
time comes when that conviction has taken full and firm 
hold of the great majority of a people, and when that 
time comes, it is no longer possible to prevent the accom- 
plishment of a change in the political system. It is not 
possible to resist that change, any more than it is to resist 
the action of any physical law governing the movements 
of the world. No matter how strong the despotic power 
which endeavours to resist, the resistance is overcome in 
the end. The movement of civilised men is everywhere 
towards representative institutions, and where there is a 
monarchy, towards the constitutional principle in the 
monarchy. The wisdom of statesmen and of rulers con- 
sists in seeing when the stages of political development 
have been reached at which successive conditions of 
arbitrary rule have to give way before the popular move- 
ment. When statesmen are wise enough to see this for 
themselves by the light of their own intelligence, or are 
made to feel it by the pressure brought to bear on them 
and are willing to give way before the pressure, we have 
reform. Where this is not done we have revolt or revo- 
lution. If revolt, it is probable that after a severe strain 
there follows a period of reaction. But that reaction is 
sure to be succeeded by another period of revolt, and if 
the resistance of the ruling power be prolonged, there 
comes at last the period of revolution. 

This chapter of history begins with the year 1830, 
after the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act, in 1828, 
and after the passing of the great Act of Catholic Eman- 
cipation in 1829. Such measures, great as were their 
results and obvious as were their justice, do not come 
within the sphere of that kind of political reform which 
is to be studied in this volume. The principle on which 
the admission of Dissenters to civil and municipal office, 



1830 Political Reform'. 3 

and the political emancipation of Catholics, was founded, 
was one of moral justice. No matter what the system of 
government which prevailed in England, the justice of 
religious equality in civil and political affairs would have 
been recognised in time. In some of the most despotic 
countries in the world there never was any idea of main- 
taining such a principle of religious exclusion and intoler- 
ance as that illustrated by the disenfranchisement of 
Roman Catholics, and the Test and Corporation Acts. 
Curiously enough, some of the countries which even in 
the present day maintain the most antique and anomalous 
systems of arbitrary government, have never had reli- 
gious exclusiveness or religious tests as any part of their 
governing principle. Therefore, it is not right to regard 
Catholic Emancipation, the recognition of the civil rights 
of Dissenters, or the admission of the Jews to the House 
of Commons, as mere measures of political reform. ' The 
disqualification was in itself an obvious and gross outrage 
on the common principle of justice which must be sup- 
posed to be the basis of every state system. But while 
it is perfectly obvious to the modern mind that no man 
ought to be excluded from citizenship and its full privi- 
leges because of his religious faith, it is not by any 
means equally obvious that a certain proportion of 
persons living in houses of a certain rental should be 
either admitted to or excluded from the right to vote. 
When we come to consider that question we come into 
the region of pure political reform. In the same way the 
functions of the sovereign cannot be defined on any 
principle of obvious and fundamental justice. It must 
be a matter of growth and development, of adaptation to 
the wants and the condition of each particular stage ot 
each country's growth : a matter of compromise and ar- 
rangement. 



4 Reform and Revolution. 1830 

Here then, also, we have the working of the principle 
('^ of political reform^ The two most significant reforms 
^^^ accomplished and established in England during the 
period which this history describes are the reforms in 
representation and the changes gradually made in the 
relation of the sovereign towards the people. These 
principles were formally established in England between 
the years 1830 and 1850. No matter what further 
changes may take place in the governing system of this 
country ; no matter how the functions of the sovereign 
may hereafter be either extended or restricted ; no matter 
how the principle of election may be expanded or 
varied ; all such changes can be but further developments 
of the principles recognised and established between 1830 
and 1850. All over Europe we see the varying process 
of development of the same principles. In every country 
of the European Continent the recognition of this princi- 
ple has been preceded by a period of revolution or of 
revolt, followed by reaction, and then revolt again. 
Only in England have the reforms been accomplished 
without a struggle. Nor is this owing, as is generally 
supposed, to the fact that the English political system 
embodied no serious grievance and no genuine oppres- 
sion. On the contrary, there were many anomalies of 
English political life which bore down on certain classes 
more severely and more unjustly than such classes were 
borne down upon in almost any continental state. The 
reason why the changes in England were so quiet and so 
satisfactory, was that English statesmen had arrived at 
that condition of political intelligence which made them 
able to recognise the fact that changes which they them- 
selves disliked, and would, if they could, have resisted, 
had nevertheless become inevitable, and must take place 
sooner or later, peacefully or with violence. Enghsh 



1 769-1821 Napoleon. 5 

statesmen were fortunately able to see the immense ad- 
vantage of accepting the inevitable at the right moment. 
Wellington and Peel saw that they could not success- 
fully resist the changes which the Metternichs and the 
Polignacs believed they could successfully resist. To 
this fact is due the whole difference between the manner 
in which political changes were wrought out in this coun- 
try and on the Continent, Had English statesmen been 
like those of foreign countries, we, too, should have had 
to describe the period between 1830 and 1850 as a pe- 
riod, not of reform, but of revolution. 

In 1830 Europe was just beginning to rise from a long 
period of depression and of political reaction. The 
French Revolution had swept over the Continent as a 
forest fire in America flames from tree to tree. The 
victories of the great Napoleon set the flag of France 
floating in every continental capital. From the heights 
of Boulogne Napoleon threatened England herself with 
invasion. Suddenly, however, there came a turn in the 
tide. Napoleon attempted impossibilities, and thus 
brought ruin upon his ambition and himself. It has 
been well observed by a French writer that the great 
difference between Napoleon and Julius Caesar is that 
Caesar knew what he could not do as well as what he 
could do, and was therefore successful to the end ; Na- 
poleon did not know what he could not do, and there- 
fore failed. Napoleon dreamed of the complete subju- 
gation of Europe ; of himself as the sole autocrat of the 
Continent; even of England beaten to her knees and 
brought under his dominion. He was not a man of 
sound political education, and did not thoroughly under- 
stand any country but his own. He was under the 
impression that the murmurs of political discontent which 
reached him from England really showed that the Eng- 



6 Reform and Revolution. 1 798-181 2 

lish people would be glad of a revolution effected in their 
country by means of an invasion from France. He had 
crushed Austria, Prussia, Spain, Italy, Holland, and all 
the continental states except Russia, and he had defeated 
Russia in the battle-field and forced the Czar to come to 
terms dictated by himself. He had set up his brothers 
as kings in Spain, Holland, and Westphalia; he had 
made his brilliant cavalry officer Murat king of Naples, 
and one of his marshals, Bernadotte, king of Sweden. 
At one point of his career Napoleon had no acknow- 
ledged enemy in Europe but England alone. Pitt, the 
Prime Minister, son of the great Chatham, had striven 
long and hard to keep up an alliance of the other Euro- 
pean powers against Napoleon, but it had utterly failed; 
and Pitt never recovered from the shock given to him by 
the news of the crushing defeat inflicted upon Austria in 
the battle of Austerlitz. England stood alone against 
Napoleon for a long time. She was always victorious on 
the seas. The genius of Nelson and his successive vic- 
tories kept alive the spirit and enthusiasm of the English 
people, even in the hours of deepest depression. At last 
Napoleon went so far as to issue decrees from Berlin and 
from Milan in which he prohibited all the European na- 
tions from trading with England. He entertained the 
preposterous idea that he could thus actually destroy the 
whole trade of England, and reduce her to something 
like starvation. He quarrelled anew with Russia, and 
entered upon the desperate scheme of an invasion of that 
country. Despite the fierce and patient resistance of 
the Russians he forced his way to Moscow. The people 
set their city on fire rather than endure its occupation by 
the French. Napoleon had to begin a retreat amid the 
terrible rigours of a Russian winter. The Russians 
harassed his retreating army at every step. The retreat 



i8i5 The Escape from Elba. y 

was only a long series of battles. Between Russian 
arms and the Russian climate Napoleon lost six -sevenths 
of his army. He had entered Russia with more than 
600,000 soldiers ; he brought less than 80,000 back. 

Meanwhile the Duke of Wellington had been defeat- 
ing some of Napoleon's best marshals in Spain, and 
rendering the French occupation of that country an im- 
possible task. Austria and Prussia had been recovering 
their courage and strength. The folly of Napoleon's 
idea, that he could really extinguish the nationality of the 
Germans and reduce them to the condition of abject 
bondmen to the power of France, soon began to show 
itself. Germany rose against him, and he received an 
overwhelming defeat at Leipzig. An alliance was again 
formed for the purpose of crushing him ; England was 
the inspiring influence of the alliance ; Russia, Austria, 
Prussia, Sweden, and other powers were joined in it. 
Napoleon was defeated ; the allied powers entered Paris ; 
he was deposed and sent to Elba, an islet in the Medi- 
terranean. The allied powers left him the title of 
Emperor and gave him a little army with which to amuse 
himself. Lord John Russell visited Napoleon in Elba, 
and had some conversation with him. Napoleon showed 
how littje he understood of England by telling Lord John 
Russell that he had no doubt the Duke of Wellington 
would make use of the great influence of his military 
success to have himself declared king of England. 

The sovereigns of Europe called together a congress 
at Vienna for the purpose of restoring what they con- 
sidered to be order, and reorganising the systems and 
countries which had been swept over by Napoleon's 
victories. The Bourbon king Louis XVIII. was set up 
in France. Suddenly, while the congress was sitting, 
Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed in France, and was 



8 Reforjn and Revolution. 1815 

welcomed everywhere by the army and the people. The 
congress broke up ; King Louis XVIII. fled in very 
unkingly fashion out of the country ; Napoleon was 
Emperor of the French once more. The allies prepared 
to attack him, and pledged themselves never to rest until 
they had completely broken his power. The only forces 
immediately available were the English and the Prus- 
sians under Wellington and Blucher in Belgium. Napo- 
leon flung himself on the Prussians and defeated them. 
One of the best of his splendid marshals, Ney, attacked 
the English at the same time, but had to fall back with- 
out success. The object of the English and the Prus- 
sians was to draw their forces together ; Napoleon's pur- 
pose was to crush the English before the Prussians could 
come up. 

Wellington took up a fine position at Waterloo, not 
very far from Brussels, the capital of Belgium. He was 
attacked by Napoleon there : he had to bear the whole 
brunt of the day alone, for the Prussians only came up 
late in the evening, and his army was not only outnum- 
bered by that of Napoleon, but had only a comparatively 
small number of English, Irish, and Scotchmen in it, 
being in great measure made up of Belgians, Hanover- 
ians, and Hessians. Wellington's generalship and the 
indomitable courage of his own men triumphed over 
every difficulty. The finest of the French cavalry could 
make no impression on them. Marshal Ney himself led 
more than one desperate charge. It is worth observing, 
to show how different the real business of a commander 
often is from the part which he would be made to play 
on the stage or in a picture, that Ney prepared for one 
charge by putting his sword into its sheath in order that it 
might be out of his way, and that Murat, the most bril- 
liant cavalry officer of his day, hardly ever went into action 



1814-15 -^^ Congress of Vie?ina. 9 

with any weapon more formidable than a riding-whip in 
his hand. At last the Prussians came up, and the defeat 
of the French was complete. Napoleon had to fly for 
his life. He reached Paris almost alone. He abdicated 
the throne, went on board an English man-of-war, the 
Bcllerophon, and surrendered himself prisoner. He was 
sent to exile in St. Helena, an island in the South Atlan- 
tic. Thackeray, the great novelist, when a child return- 
ing from India, was taken at St. Helena to see the fallen 
Emperor walking up and down his little garden. Napo- 
leon never succeeded in regaining his freedom, and he 
died in St. Helena ; still, after all that wild and wonder- 
ful career, having scarcely passed middle age. 

Meanwhile the Congress of Vienna set to work to re- 
store the old conditions of things in Europe. The conti- 
nental sovereigns and statesmen had not the faintest 
comprehension of the realities of the situation. They 
did not understand that Napoleon had really effaced 
feudalism and what was called the divine right of kings. 
The French Revolution, of which he had been the great 
weapon and instrument, had destroyed all in the old sys- 
tems that really deserved destruction and had long been 
waiting for it. No congress, no Holy Alliance, as the 
union of some of the continental sovereigns was after- 
wards called, could restore what the Revolution had ac- 
tually removed. But the continental sovereigns and 
statesmen did not see this, and were fully convinced that 
it only needed a little exertion of energy to bring back 
the old order of things. The Holy Alliance was framed 
by a convention signed with the names of Francis, Em- 
peror of Austria, Frederick William, King of Prussia, 
and Alexander, Emperor of Russia. The convention 
declared that these sovereigns had no other object in 
framing the agreement than to publish to the world their 



lo Reform and Revolution. 1814-27 

fixed resolution to take, in the administration of their own 
states and in their relations with other powers, the pre- 
cepts of religion for their sole guide. They therefore 
pledged themselves to " remain united by the bonds of a 
true and indissoluble fraternity," and to help each other 
and to use their arms to protect religion, peace, and jus- 
tice. Finally, the document declared that all powers 
which should choose " solemnly to avow the sacred prin- 
ciples which have dictated the present act will be received 
with equal ardour and affection into this holy alliance." 
These last words gave to the alliance the name by which 
it has ever since been known. It soon appeared, how- 
ever, that by maintaining peace, religion, and justice, the 
allied powers only meant the carrying out of their own 
despotic will, and securing their own supposed interests. 
They proclaimed themselves the champions and minis- 
ters of religion and justice, but reserved to themselves the 
right of defining what justice and religion were. Justice 
and religion meant, according to their definition, the di- 
vine right of kings, the sacredness of despotic power, 
and the suppression of free speech and public liberty of 
every kind, wherever they could exercise any power of 
intervention. 

So they complacently set to work to put back the hand 
of time to the historical hour at which it was pointing 
when the mob of Paris destroyed the Bastile. They re- 
stored the dethroned princes and princelings ; they sus- 
tained arbitrary authority everywhere ; they proclaimed 
once again the principle of the divine right of kings ; 
they put a stop to liberty of speech or publication ; 
they governed by soldiers and police. They bound 
themselves by the engagement from which was taken the 
name of " holy alliance " to unite in putting down revo- 
lutionary agitation wherever it should show itself. For a 



1814-27 The Policy of Canning. n 

time, England, under such ministers as Lord Liverpool 
and Lord Castlereagh, lent herself to this policy of reac- 
tion and repression. It was only when Canning, the 
great parliamentary orator and statesman, came to be 
really powerful that this country distinctly and finally 
withdrew from any participation in the principles and the 
policy of the holy alliance. Gradually the very strin- 
gency of the reaction brought about the undoing of much 
of its own work. The resolve of the Bourbon Govern- 
ment of France to intervene in the affairs of Spain, in 
order to put down popular movements there, impelled 
Canning to recognise the independence of the Spanish 
colonies in Mexico and South America that were then in 
revolt against Spanish dominion, and thus, as he said 
himself in the House of Commons, to call in the New 
World to redress the balance of the Old. The allies had 
joined Holland and Belgium under the crown of an 
Orange Prince — a union impossible of realisation since 
the days of William the Silent himself; and the result 
thus far was but a growing evidence of an incompatibil- 
ity which could only end, as it actually did end soon 
after, in convulsion and in the total separation of the 
countries thus forced together against their inclination. 
The independence of Greece is due to the foreign policy 
of England. Greece had long been suffering the most 
cruel oppression under the rule of the Turk. A rebel- 
lion broke out among the Greeks. The English states- 
men endeavoured at first to restore peace by securing 
a genuine reform in the system by which Greece was 
governed ; but as it becam.e more and more evident that 
the Turks would not reform and that Greece would not 
submit, the sympathy of England was cordially given to 
the Greeks in their gallant struggle, and at last an alli- 
ance v/as formed by England, France, and Russia, in 



12 England after the War with Napoleon. 1815—30 

which England took the lead, and the result was the 
establishment of Greek independence. No English 
statesman would accept the responsibility of the battle 
of Navarino, in which the Turkish fleet was destroyed 
by the united fleets of the allies under an English Admi- 
ral. But the policy of England had none the less 
brought about the freedom of Greece. In fact, the prin- 
ciple on which the Holy Alliance had acted tended only 
to accomplish the very results which it was formed to 
prevent. The extravagances of the French Revolution 
and the reckless aggressive ambition of Napoleon had 
set in motion that reaction which reached its height in 
the Holy Alliance. The Holy Alliance in its turn, by 
trying to suppress every free movement, made revolution 
unavoidable on the Continent, and opened the way for 
reform in England. 



CHAPTER n. 

ENGLAND AFTER THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON. 

The years between 181 5 and 1830 were specially favour- 
able for the growth of a spirit encouraging a new move- 
ment towards pohtical reform. England was weary of 
a war which had lasted with little intermission for more 
than twenty-one years. Her people had had their fill of 
military glory, and had paid their ample share of personal 
and public sacrifice. Domestic improvement had long 
been neglected. All schemes of political reform had 
been thrown into the shade for the time. England and 
her statesmen were filled with the one paramount idea — 
that of crushing the national enemy. Even while the 
process of crushing the national enemy was going on 
there were a good many persons here and there who 



1815-30 England after Waterloo. 1 3 

never felt quite certain whether a different kind of pohcy 
on the part of the Enghsh government might not have 
changed the enemy into a friend. There were many 
who doubted whether a different course pursued towards 
the French Repubhc might not have avoided all the 
hatred and all the warlike rivalry which imposed so 
much sacrifice on both peoples. At this distance of time 
we only hear of the uprising of the national spirit against 
Napoleon and the French, and the hatred felt for " the 
Corsican ogre," and the exultation of Europe over his 
fall. But anyone who takes the trouble to look a little 
closely into the history of that time will find that the 
sympathy which welcomed the birth of the French Re- 
public outlived amongst certain classes in this country 
the errors and excesses of that Republic, and went with 
Napoleon long after he had ceased to represent the 
Republican principle. At all events, there were many 
who much doubted whether the triumphs which the long 
struggle brought to England were worth the cost and the 
suffering by which they were bought. 

After the war was over and the nation had settled 
down to peace again, there came naturally a certain time 
of political prostration, owing in part to the reaction 
against the first enthusiasm created by the French Re- 
public and the disappointment of so many generous 
hopes, which, like those of Fox, were founded on the 
uprising of that great new principle in Europe. But the 
continuance of peace brought a revival of domestic pros- 
perity, and with it a revival of the feelings which make 
for political reform. Mr. Walpole in his " History of 
England" justly observes, in contrasting the England of 
1830 with the England of 181 5, that in 181 5 legislation 
had been directed to secure the advantage of a class. 
During the interval between 181 5 and 1830 most of the 



1 4 England after the War with Napoleon. 1 8 1 5-30 

sinecures established for the benefit of the higher classes 
had been abolished. It seems now almost incompre- 
hensible that people should have endured so long the 
existence of many of those gross and monstrous sine- 
cures — offices with large pay and no duties — invented for 
the purpose of pensioning some bankrupt member of the 
aristocracy. The practice which allowed public officers 
to discharge their duties by deputies had also been to a 
great extent abolished. Roman Catholics were allowed 
to sit in Parliament. Dissenters might hold all manner 
of civil and political offices. A Jew might be a civic 
ofiicer of London. In commercial legislation the princi- 
ple of reform was making its appearance also. In foreign 
policy there was a reaction going on against the princi- 
ples of the Holy Alliance and "the crowned conspirators 
of Verona," as Sydney Smith called them, and there was 
a tendency to recognise that principle of nationalities 
which has inspired so profoundly the foreign policy of 
our own time. The criminal code had been mitigated 
by the abolition of some of its most cruel excesses. The 
Chancery Courts and Ecclesiastical Courts had felt the 
influence of the growing spirit of inquiry and of reforma- 
tion. 

It would not have been possible that political reform 
should remain long inactive under conditions so favour- 
able to the development of reasonable principles in every 
other direction. At the same time that all this improve- 
ment was making itself manifest, the condition of the 
labouring classes in the counties was not growing better. 
Perhaps it would be rash to say that the labouring poor 
were positively worse off in 1830 than they had been half 
a century before, but at least they were relatively worse 
off. Their condition had not improved in any sense, 
while the artisans in the towns were getting more pros- 



i8i7 The Blanketeers, 15 

perous and more intelligent and more capable of acting 
in combination. The manufacturing power of England 
had grown immensely. New inventions, new appliances 
in almost every department of industrial science were 
giving fresh employment in every direction. Even the 
.very mechanism which the artisans dreaded and detested 
at first, under the idea that it would interfere with man's 
labour and his wages, was obviously operating only to 
increase the amount of employment in all the manufac- 
turing centres of the country. Here we have three con- 
ditions each acting in its own way as an influence in 
favour of political reform. War is over and there seems 
no prospect of its return ; artisans in towns are better 
paid and more self-reliant than they were ; labourers in 
the counties are, if not poorer, certainly no better off 
than at any previous time. The interval of peace gives 
men leisure to think of domestic politics. The sinking, 
or apparently sinking, condition of the labouring classes 
in the counties, where privilege is strongest, shows the 
necessity for some step of reform being undertaken ; and 
the working classes in the cities better paid, more inde- 
pendent and more capable of combination than ever they 
had been before, furnish a kind of reserve force at the 
command of political reformers. 

Many causes had operated to throw the artisan 
classes of the northern and midland towns into hostility 
against Tory principles and Governments. The memory 
of the Blanketeers was still fresh in the public mind. In 
18 1 7 some starving colliers of the North had thought of 
making a pilgrimage to the house of the Prince Regent in 
London, in the hope of being allowed to tell their tale of 
misery to him, and induce him to do something on their 
behalf. Following the example of those poor fellows, a 
large body of Manchester working men resolved that 



1 6 England after the War with Napoleon. 1 8 1 7- 1 9 

they would walk to London, make known their griev- 
ances to the authorities there, and ask for parliamentai7 
reform as one means of improving their condition. The 
plan was that each pilgrim was to carry a blanket with 
him, so that they might rest by the way at any chance 
place of shelter. For this they were called Blanketeers., 
The Government regarded this harmless movement in 
exactly the same light as the Government of Louis the 
Sixteenth's earliest years had regarded the attempt of a 
starving crowd to excite the compassion of the sovereign : 
" And so, on May 2, 1775, these vast multitudes do here 
at Versailles chateau, in widespread wretchedness, in 
sallow faces, squalor, winged raggedness, present, as in 
legible hieroglyphic writing, their Petition of Grievances. 
The chateau gates must be shut ; but the king will ap- 
pear on the balcony and speak to them. They have 
seen the king's face ; their Petition of Grievances has 
been, if not read, looked at. For answer two of them are 
hanged on a * new gallows forty feet high,* and the rest 
driven back to their dens for a time. " No leader of 
the Blanketeers was hanged, but some of them were 
seized and imprisoned. Troops were placed along the 
line of march ; many of the pilgrims were sent back to 
their dens again ; others were thrown into prison forth- 
with. 

It is needless to say that these high-handed measures 

did not prevail on people to be content with their condi- 
tion, to refrain from holding meetings, and renounce their 
demand for political reform. A very widespread and 
vehement agitation sprang up. Manchester took a lead- 
ing part in it. Most of the towns in the North fermented 
with it. Orator Hunt, as he was called, a Radical 
agitator and stump speaker, became famous for a moment 
as a hopeful leader. He found his level afterwards 



1 8 1 9 Pctoioo. 1 7 

in the House of Commons, and the recognition of 
the principle of reform would in any case probably have 
extinguished him, for he was not in any sense a genuine 
orator or even a great demagogue. But the Government 
set about to deal with the agitation in a fashion which 
made agitation popular and widespread, and the same 
sort of policy made Orator Hunt into a popular idol, 
and brought the condition of England, to adopt Mr. 
Gladstone's famous phrase, " within a measurable distance 
of civil war. " On August i6, 1819, a great meeting was 
held in the large field near St. Peter's Church, Man- 
chester, the spot on which the Free Trade Hall now stands. 
About 80,000 persons seem to have been present, and 
Orator Hunt was to be the hero of the day. Special Con- 
stables and Yeomanry were present in large numbers. 
When Hunt began to speak some movement took place 
amongst the Yeomanry which the crowd interpreted as 
an attempt to disperse them. The Yeomanry seem them- 
selves to have been alarmed by the swaying motions of 
the crowd. The result was an unlucky demonstration of 
authority on the one side, and a counter demonstra- 
tion of force on the other. The Riot Act was read. Hunt 
was arrested the moment he began to speak. He gave 
himself up quietly, recommended peace and order to the 
crowd, and was taken to the prison — for no offence that 
anyone could see. A scene of confusion took place 
which has never been clearly explained, but at last the 
Yeomanry rode at the crowd flourishing their swords. 
The immense size and weight of the crowd rendered its 
dispersion impossible, and the result was that many poor 
people were trampled under the feet of the horses or 
sabred by the swords of the Yeomanry. Some of the 
crowd flung stones at the horsemen. Altogether between 
three and four hundred persons were more or less injured. 

C 



1 8 England after the Wa?' with Napoleon. 1817-29 

Every attempt to have the action of the Yeomanry pun- 
ished or even rebuked proved hopeless. The event was 
long afterwards remembered as the massacre of Peterloo. 
Its immediate effect was to swell up the fire of anger on 
both sides into something that seemed to threaten a dan- 
gerous explosion. 

The Government had no idea of dealing with the crisis 
in any other way than by bringing in new measures 
authorising them to search for arms and seize them, to 
disperse great popular meetings, to punish seditious pub- 
lications, and to apply the principle of coercion every- 
where. Any coercion Bill was sure to be carried by a 
large majority of the House of Commons, but any propo- 
sal to inquire into the causes of the existing discontents 
and distress had little chance of obtaining even a decent 
number of supporters. 

The one great reform which, articulately or inarticulate- 
ly, the public voice began now to demand, was a measure 
which should make the House of Commons a represen- 
tative institution. This was a change to be accomplished 
by law. There was, however, another reform necessary 
to be effected in order to make the English Government 
constitutional in the true sense. This latter reform did 
not require legislative action to give it effect, and, indeed, 
could hardly be brought about by any Act of Parliament. 
It was a change in the relations of the Sovereign to the 
Ministry and to the House of Commons, a change which 
should make the majority of the House of Commons 
practically supreme over the Sovereign as well as over 
the Ministry. The one reform, as we shall presently see, 
brought about the other. 

The representation of the people of these countries was 
in an anomalous condition. The House of Commons 
did not, in any sense, fairly represent the nation. The 



I Si 7-29 The Rep7'esentaiive Principle. 19 

theory of a representative constitution is very simple. It 
is founded on what may be called an ordinary principle 
of business. There is no mystery about it, and no pro- 
found philosophy. It is simply the principle that every 
man understands best his own business, and that for a 
Government to get to understand the best way to manage 
the affairs of a country the surest method is to get as 
nearly as possible the opinion of every man in the coun- 
try. Out of all these opinions a reasonable Government 
is supposed to be able to form a general idea of what the 
wishes of the country are, and it is fairly to be supposed 
that the common wish of the country will in ordi- 
nary cases tend in the direction of the country's 
welfare. Now, as it is not possible that each man shall 
give his opinion and have his say in public affairs, the 
principle of representation forces itself into recognition. 
Certain spokesmen are chosen by the people, or at least 
by those of the people who are electors and have the 
votes, and the spokesmen represent the views of those 
who have chosen them. Thus in a constitutional assembly 
the Government will always have the advantage of hear- 
ing the opinions of the majority in each constituency and 
also of the minority throughout the whole country. In 
truth this principle of representation really belongs in 
more or less crude form to every system of government. 
There used to be at one time a great deal of speculation 
as to the relative advantages of a representative system 
and of what was called a benevolent despotism. But, in 
fact, the comparison is one that cannot be fairly made. 
There is no absolute despotism in countries which have 
emerged even from the rudest forms of barbarism. No one 
man really exercises an unlimited and unconditional sway 
over a people, and manages their affairs " out of his own 
head," or according to his own caprice. In every state, 



20 England after the War with Napoleon. 1829 

however despotic its constitution may seem to be, the 
Sovereign has to take into account the feehngs and 
opinions of those over whom he rules. Whether he does 
this perfectly or imperfectly, whether by means of a 
recognised representative system or by means of inqui- 
ries and investigation made through his agents and his 
creatures, the principle is the same. He has to consult 
and does consult what he believes to be the general wish 
of his people. The Sultan Haroun Alraschid goes forth 
at night in disguise and wanders through the streets of 
Bagdad to find out what the people are saying. Louis the 
Great endeavours to get at what people are saying 
through the medium of police spies and court gossip. 
Napoleon I. sets himself to work to manufacture a public 
opinion which may supply the place of the genuine article, 
and may support him in every enterprise which he feels 
inchned to undertake. The Emperor Nicholas of Russia 
condescends to confer with his council of notables, and 
endeavours to get at the opinions of the various govern- 
ments and provinces of his Empire. No ruler, however 
autocratic, ventures to govern in absolute independence 
of the opinions of his subjects. He gets some hint at 
public opinion through police reports, through epigrams ; 
or at last through infernal machines, Orsini bombs, 
daggers, dynamite. What men think will be made 
known. 

Where a constitutional principle is recognised, and 
where the system of open representation is admitted, it 
is obviously of the utmost importance that the system 
shall be genuine, and shall answer the purposes it pro- 
fesses to attain. The benevolent despot, making his in- 
quiries after his own fashion, would be much more likely 
to get a just notion of what his people wanted than the so- 
called constitutional Sovereign who rehed upon an inadc- 



1829 Catholic Emancipation. 21 

quate and imperfect system of representation. There 
never was a time in England when the authority of tlie 
Sovereign was held to be absolute over the people, and 
when the King, in his dealings with any class or person 
of the community, was supposed to have the sam^e kind 
of power which some of the peasantry of Russia are still 
willing to believe is possessed by their Czar. For gene- 
rations in England the only absolute authority claimed 
for or by the Sovereign, was an authority over his 
Ministers ; these were, in fact, considered his Ministers 
in the strictest sense, his subordinates, his clerks, the 
officers of his authority, the instruments of his will. Down 
almost to 1830, it was still the habit of the Sovereign to 
govern the country, when he chose, with a set of Minis- 
ters who were continually outvoted and censured in the 
House of Commons. The king, up to the same period, 
did really exercise the right which now exists only as a 
name, that of appointing and dismissing Ministers to suit 
his own will and pleasure. The great change which in 
our time has been brought about makes it certain that 
although there be no written law or constitutional pre- 
cept to enforce it, the Sovereign no longer chooses or 
dismisses Ministers, except with reference to the ex- 
pressed will of the nation through its representative 
chamber. It is impossible in our time to suppose that a 
Sovereign could attempt to return to the principles so 
completely, although so silently, abolished. A country is 
a constitutional country only when this change has been 
accomplished. The transition which was made by Eng- 
land in the period between the reign of George III. and 
the first few years of the reign of Queen Victoria, was, in 
this respect, as important a reform as any which could 
be effected in our Parliamentary institutions. 

Although this little history does not deal with the story 



22 England after the War with Napoleon. 1829 

of Catholic emancipation, it is of material bearing on our 
task to point out the result of the manner in which 
Catholic emancipation was granted. The world has 
justly praised the wisdom of English statesmen like 
Wellington and Peel, who would have refused Catholic 
emancipation if they could, but yet saw that the time had 
come when they could no longer safely refuse it. Un- 
doubtedly, by the adoption of such a political principle 
English statesmen have more than once avoided revolu- 
tion. But while avoiding a greater they established a 
lesser evil. They did not surround their policy with the 
dignity and the glory of justice. They did not impress 
the popular imagination and stimulate the popular rever- 
ence by the spectacle of a statesmanship that acted only 
on the principle of right. Men saw that their rulers did 
the just act, not because they themselves believed it to 
be just, but because they found it to be expedient. Men 
saw that whatever was demanded with force enough at 
its back was likely to be regarded as a demand which it 
would be expedient to grant. Catholic emancipation was 
yielded not as a matter of justice, but in deference to a 
pressure from without which the Duke of Wellington 
declared that he could not resist. He said he had to 
choose between emancipating the Catholics and en- 
countering a civil war, and he was not prepared to en- 
counter a civil war. Even when emancipation was 
granted, and on these conditions, it was granted grudg- 
ingly. Every possible attempt was made to minimise 
its immediate influence. The man whose eloquence and 
energy had done more than any other influence to force 
emancipation on the Government, Mr. O'Connell, was 
kept out of Parliament as long as it was possible by any 
craft on the part of the Government to continue his 
exclusion. The effect of all this was to impress on the 



1829 Popular Agitation. 23 

English as v/ell as the Irish people the conviction that 
no justice could be had without a threat of violence, and 
that anything could- be obtained which was supported by- 
sufficient demonstration of strength. It is hardly too 
much to say that to the manner in which the Govern- 
ment resisted Catholic emancipation, and their grudging 
way of at last conceding it, is due a great part of the 
discontent and disaffection which have existed in Ireland 
from that time. It is clearly one of the defects of our 
constitutional system, that a reform of any kind is seldom 
made in mere obedience to the justice of the demand. 
Perhaps this is a defect inseparable from a popular 
system, and to be accepted merely as one of the disad- 
vantages attending every organisation worked out by 
men. The defect at all events is there, and its operation 
may be observed in every chapter of our political history. 
No matter how just may be the claims of a certain re- 
form, no politician expects to see it granted spontaneously 
and because of its justice. There must be agitation, 
there must be popular clamour, there must very often be 
something like a hint of possible resistance to the law 
before the reform is carried. 

Indeed, under our present system it is not easy to see 
how the condition of things could well be different. The 
House of Commons undertakes to manage the business 
of the country. Every improvement of every institution 
must be accomplished through its means. Each year 
brings fresh demands for reform, and new development 
in almost every direction. Anomalies which our fore- 
fathers put up with good-humouredly and perhaps did 
not even observe, are irritating and intolerable to us. 
With the growth of education we become continually 
more and more anxious to bring the practical working of 
our systems into harmony with reasonable theories. All 



24 England afte?' tlie War with Napoleoii. 1S29 

our commercial and industrial systems require, in their 
gradual development, new changes of legislation to suit 
the altered conditions. Thus we find a multitude of 
voices crying out together for a change in some law. It 
is impossible that Parliament can undertake all the 
changes together, and it has therefore come to be under- 
stood that the reform which has the most and the loudest 
voices clamouring on its side must have precedence. It 
is a question not of the survival of the fittest but of the 
precedence of the fittest. Therefore, the course of legis- 
lation in our times is almost certain to go through suc- 
cessive stages each one of which can be foreseen and 
speculated on by prudent persons in anticipation. The 
reform is first discussed and justified by writers and 
thinkers. At this stage of its history Parliament cares 
nothing about it. Then it becomes a subject of agitation 
out of doors. When it has made stir enough in that 
way it becomes a question of Parliamentary debate. 
Parliament however for a long time takes no further 
account of the proposed reform than to have a discussion 
on it every session. Suddenly, however, by chance or 
otherwise, it grows strong with the country. Great 
meetings are held; stormy crowds come together; per- 
haps there are riots ; at all events there is danger of 
public disturbance, and then at length Parliament sud- 
denly finds that it has to deal with a more vehement 
claimant than any other just then demanding to be heard, 
and yields to popular clamour what it never would have 
thought of yielding to justice. As Comte described all 
the intelligence of man as passing through its three 
distinct gradations of the supernatural, the metaphysical, 
and the positive, so we m.ay describe English reform as 
passing distinctly through the three stages of the study, 
the platform, and the Parliament. 



183-0 Popular Agitatiofi. 25 

It is worth noting, too, that the manner in which the 
representative constitution of the House of Commons has 
been expanded has not thus far tended in any degree to 
make it more ready to take the initiative in legislation. 
Still, as before, it waits patiently until the voice of the 
country calls on it to act and tells it distinctly what it is 
to do, before venturing on any action. In no matter of 
any importance whatever, does Parliament attempt to 
take the initiative, or to anticipate the wants and wishes 
of the country. In the days just before the passing of the 
Reform Bill, the epoch with which we are now imme- 
diately concerned, it seemed to be the principal office of 
Parliament to resist as long as possible every public and 
popular demand. Statesmanship then appeared to have 
accepted, in domestic policy at least, the simple business 
of obstruction. To resist change so long as it could safely 
be resisted, was then apparently an English Minister's 
notion of his duty. Well was it for England that this 
was all that her statesm.anship felt itself called upon to 
do. Statesmen in other countries believed themselves 
conscientiously bound to resist change even at the peril 
of national peace, to resist it to the death. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE LEADERS OF REFORM. 

For a long time previous to 1830, there seemed to be no 
fixed rule in these countries for the selection of the towns 
to have representatives in the House of Commons. The 
principle in former times appears to have been that the 
Sovereign issued his writ to any town or place he chose 
to select. The King invited such a place to send a re- 
presentative to advise him. The assumption was that he 



26 The Leaders of Reform. 1830 

chose the places to be represented in accordance with 
their population and their importance, but it is almost 
needless to say that the power which the Sovereign 
assumed was exercised very often in the most arbitrary 
fashion. Habit came in many cases to make the arbitrary 
choice permanent and perpetual. Many places which 
had been tolerably populous when the Sovereign first 
invited them to send representatives to the House of 
Commons, lost their population and their importance and 
fell into actual decay. Yet the Sovereign continued to 
issue his writ and to invite those places to send represen- 
tatives to Parliament, In some instances the places 
named actually ceased to be anything more than geo- 
graphical expressions. The hamlet or village, or what- 
ever it might have been, fell into ruin. There was no 
population. The owner of the soil was perhaps the sole 
resident. 

The case of Old Sarum is famous. Old Sarum was a 
town in Wiltshire. It stood not far from where Salisbury 
now stands ; Salisbury is in fact New Sarum. It returned 
members to Parliament in Edward I.'s time and after- 
wards in the days of Edward III., and from that 
period down to the time of the Reform Bill, which we are 
now about to consider. But the town of Old Sarum 
gradually disappeared. Owing to the rise of " New 
Sarum,'' Salisbury, and to other causes, the population 
gradually deserted Old Sarum. The town became prac- 
tically effaced from existence ; its remains far less palpa- 
ble and visible than those of any Baalbec or Palmyra. 
Yet it continued to be represented in Parliament. It was 
at one time bought by Chatham's grandfather, " Govern- 
or Pitt," as he was called after he had been Governor of 
Madras, the owner of the famous diamond. It was cool- 
ly observed at the time that " Mr. Pitt's posterity now 



1830 Bribery, 27 

have an hereditary right to a seat in the House of Com- 
mons as owners of Old Sarum, as the Earls of Arundel 
have to a seat in the House of Peers as Lords of Arundel 
Castle." Ludgershall in Wiltshire was another place 
which continued to send members to Parliament long 
after it had ceased to be a constituency. This was the 
place which was offered up as a free sacrifice by its rep- 
resentative during the debates on the Reform Bill. Grave- 
ly announcing himself as the patron of Ludgershall, the 
constituency of Ludgershall, and the member for Lud- 
gershall, this gentleman declared that in all three capa- 
cities he meant to vote for the disfranchisement of Lud- 
gershall. A place called Gatton, with seven electors, 
had two members. Two-thirds of the House of Com- 
mons was made up of the nominees of peers or great 
landlords. The patrons owned their boroughs and their 
members just as they owned their parks and their cattle. 
One duke returned eleven members ; another, nine. 
Seats were openly bought and sold. In some instances 
they were publicly advertised for sale. The poll might 
remain open at one period for six weeks. In 1784 its 
limit was reduced to fifteen days. Bribery, drunkenness, 
hideous scenes of debauchery and riot went on without 
intermission during all that time. A county or borough, 
during a contest, was as completely surrendered to a 
saturnalia of infamy, as a captured town used at one 
time to be given up for a certain number of days to 
the license of the conqueror's soldiery. Allowing for 
the exaggeration permissible to a great humourist, it does 
not seem as if Hogarth's famous picture of the election 
gave any very extravagant notion of the things that 
were done and the sights that were seen during a parlia- 
mentary contest in England. Public opinion had hardly 
any influence on the choice of many, if not most of the 



2 8 The Leaders of Refor7n. 1830 

constituencies, even when there were constituencies to 
choose. Territorial influences and money settled the 
matter between them. While places no longer marked on 
the map had any representatives, the great manufactur- 
ing towns, such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, 
were without representations. They had grown up to bo 
prosperous and populous communities while Gatton and 
Old Sarum were sinking into decay and death, but 
the Sovereign's power to summon representatives did 
not deign to take account of them. In Ireland and Scot- 
land the condition of things was on the whole still worse 
and more anomalous, if that were possible, than in Eng- 
land. 

The franchise, both in counties and in boroughs, was 
so high as to preclude anything like the possibility of 
popular representation. On the other hand, this high 
level of franchise was balanced in the boroughs and cities 
by a number of arbitrary franchises, conferred on what 
were called freemen, resident and non-resident : on forty- 
shilling freeholders, and on various associations or cor- 
porations of men ; and these, connecting no moral or 
political responsibility whatever with the exercise of the 
vote, really tended only to give better facilities for cor- 
ruption. Some of these antiquated and anomalous fran- 
chises only introduced into the constituency a class of 
persons who were completely at the service of the highest 
bidder. They sold their votes as the informers in certain 
days of the Roman Empire sold their testimony. 

Meanwhile, great English populations were growing 
into importance in the manufacturing districts. Towns 
and cities began to arise here and there whose vastness, 
wealth, and intelligence surpassed anything that could 
have been represented by local communities in earlier 
days of the Parliament. Towns like Birmingham and 



1793 -^^- Grcf s Petition. 29 

Leeds and Manchester and Sheffield began to have a 
pubUc opinion of their own, interests of their own, am- 
bitions and aspirations of their own. Very naturally 
they began to crave for some place in the representative 
system of the country. Reform schemes were brought 
forward every now and then, and came to nothing. 
Lord Chatham, in 1770, supported a motion made by the 
Marquis of Rockingham, in favour of Parliamentary re- 
form, and pointed out that "the strength and vigour of the 
constitution " must reside, not " in the little dependent bor- 
oughs," but in "the great cities and counties." The 
American War interposed and diverted attention from 
the whole subject. In 1782 his son, William Pitt, moved 
for a Select Committee on the subject of Parliamentary 
reform. In 1785, when Pitt was Prime Minister, he made 
an attempt to amend the representation by taking from 
thirty-six small boroughs their right to return members, 
and endowing certain counties or populous places with 
the privilege. His scheme also included a provision for 
gradually extinguishing the franchise of boroughs which 
might have fallen into decay. This scheme, however, 
was negatived by a majority of 74. It is not likely that 
Pitt was much in earnest about the matter; he would 
have had a much larger following if jt had been gen- 
erally understood that he really meant reform. Then the 
French Revolution intervened. That revolution, how- 
ever, in the first instance, did more to excite the enthu- 
siasm of reformers than to arouse the alarms of those 
who were opposed to reform. Mr. Charles Grey, the 
friend and pupil of Fox, afterwards Earl Grey, whose 
stately eloquence still survives in the memory of living 
men, took up the cause of reform, and presented a peti- 
tion from Sheffield, from Birmingham, from the city ot 
Edinburgh, and various other places, praying for Parlia- 



30 The Leaders of Refor7n . 1793-1830 

mentary reform. The most important, however, of the 
petitions which Mr. Grey presented, was the famous 
Prayer from "the members of the Society of the Friends 
of the People, associated for the purpose of obtaining a 
Parhamentary reform." This remarkable petition, pre- 
sented to the House of Commons on May 6, 1793, de- 
clared that no less than 1 50 members were actually nom- 
inated by members of the House of Lords ; that 40 Peers 
returned 8 1 members by their own positive authority in 
small boroughs, and that an absolute majority of the Re- 
presentative Chamber were returned by influences entirely 
independent of, and opposed to the representative prin- 
ciple. The petition also complained of the length and 
the cost of electoral contests, and of the complicated 
"fancy franchises" which we have already mentioned. 

The House of Commons, whose constitution was chal- 
lenged by this petition, decided by an overwhelming ma- 
jority in its own favour. Then the wild days of the 
French Revolution interposed, and a reaction led by 
Burke's famous Essay set in amongst all the influential 
classes of English society. 

Reform, the safeguard against revolution, became 
identified with revolution itself, in the minds of most men. 
The reform question fell into something like oblivion. 
Mr. Grey, indeed, raised the subject in Parliament once 
or twice, but each time apparently with less chance of 
success and with diminished favour. Not for some years 
after the fall of Napoleon, and the temporarily decisive 
victory of Waterloo, did the subject of Parliamentary re- 
form become a serious question in the House of Com- 
mons. It was not allowed to lie wholly in abeyance all 
this time. Now and again a motion was brought forward 
in the House by Sir Francis Burdett, by Lord John Rus- 
sell, by the Marquis of Blandford, by Lord Howick, son 



1 764-1845 Lord Grey. 31 

of Charles, now become Earl Grey, and by other men 
having the object of dealing with the question, or with 
some branch of it, but without any marked result. 

Lord Grey was still the recognised leader of the 
reform party. He had been the friend and pupil of Fox. 
He was a man of remarkable energy and unbending 
character. Macaulay has paid a well-merited tribute of 
praise to the stately eloquence of which he was a master. 
In his younger days he had been one of the managers of 
the famous impeachment of Warren Hastings. He ap- 
peared side by side with Burke and Fox and Sheridan and 
Windham. "Nor," as Macaulay says, " though surrounded 
by such men. did,t.be youngest manager pass unnoticed." 
" Those," adds tilie historian, "who within the last ten years 
have listened with delight till the morning sun shone on 
the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and 
animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to 
form some estimate of the powers of a race of men 
amongst whom he was not the foremost." Lord Grey's 
eloquence was probably of a kind hardly known to our 
time. It seems to have been measured, stately, grand, 
better suited to illustrate great principles and advocate 
large reforms, than to deal with what we may call the 
mere business details which take up most of the work of 
Parliament at the present day. Although the pupil of 
Fox, Lord Grey does not seem to have caught from his 
master any of that spontaneous and impassioned elo- 
quence which has been described by Grattan as " rolling 
in resistless as the waves of the Atlantic." Those, 
perhaps, among us who can remember the lofty, half- 
poetic oratory of the late Lord Ellenborough, with its 
diction apparently raised above the level of ordinary 
events and common debate, will have a better impression 
of the style of eloquence in which Lord Grey was distin- 



32 The Leaders of Refo7'in. 1 792-1840 

guished. Lord Grey was a man of the highest personal 
honour and character. Nature had not, perhaps, given 
him any great force of will or power of initiative. He 
was therefore apt to be sometimes under the influence of 
those immediately around him. He was said, for ex- 
ample, to be very much under the control of his son-in- 
law, Lord Durham. But Lord Grey had the entire con- 
fidence of the reformers of England, and was in every 
way a man fitted to stand between Sovereign and people 
at a great political crisis. He had the courage to tell a 
Sovereign what it became . the Sovereign's duty to do, 
although the admonition might be distasteful to royal 
ears, and he had the firmness not <"CL?Jlow.ixhnself to be 
led away too far by the impatient demaiids of a re^on- 
ably dissatisfied people. ' * 

The reformers out of doors would probably not have 
been sorry if Lord Durham's influence over his father-in 
law had been even greater than it was reported to be. 
Lord Grey was ready to give that opportunity to younger 
men which the leader of a political party is not always 
found considerate enough to allow, and his most Radical 
colleague at that time was Lord Durham. The fame of 
Lord Durham has curiously faded and become dim in 
our day. He was a inan of a ' masterful ' character, to 
adopt an expressive provincial word. He was a bold 
and earnest Radical, going much further in some of his 
notions on the subject of reform than most of the pro- 
fessed Radicals of our own day would be inclined to do. 
He had a strong and resolute will. His temper was 
overbearing, and often swept away his judgment in its 
fitful and sudden gusts. He was too sensitive for his own 
happiness or his success as a politician. Lord Durham's 
political career was short. He had been long out of 
politics when he died in the July of 1840, and he was 



i'j'j()-i86S Lord B7'ougham. 33 

then only in his forty-ninth year. But at the time we 
are now describing he was tlie hope of all the more ad- 
vanced Radicals of the country, and he had still a gieat 
career before him. It is fairly to be called a great career, 
although it was a failure so far as Lord Durham's poli- 
tical advancement was concerned. Lord Durham was 
sent out to settle the disturbances in misgoverned and 
rebellious Canada ; and he founded the great, prosper- 
ous, self-governing country, in whose fortunes and pro- 
gress we all now take ^sg^^j^dee^u-^ninterest. He evolved 
order out of chao^''^:-^QBctfe0l ffl^^^^^igie as a dictator. 
He had to x<tQ^^?k%Q a whole countn^.^Kfl he did so 
without much reiiedrd for the sort of systenvw'hich bung- 
ling legislation, had tried in vain to estaoliih. He was 
recalled ; he wS^ officially disgraced ^J^ut W might fairly 
have said that he^feM^/C^9i^^]g(%. \^/T)urham sent 
to Ireland about the sanT<T~tT-mr7"T^^^llo we d to follow 
out the guidance of his genius and his free political 
principles, might have unravelled the tangled work of 
blundering centuries, and made the basis of a thorough 
and cordiaf co-partnership between England and Ireland 
to endure forever. 

Among the chiefs and captains of reform in those days 
there was one more widely popular, and even more 
strenuously self-asserting, than Lord Durham. This was 
Henry Brougham, soon after to be Lord Chancellor. 
Brougham was unquestionably the most energetic re- 
former of the period. His talents were miscellaneous, 
brilliant, and his capacity for labour seemed inexhausti- 
ble. He delighted in work. He seemed only to live 
and enjoy himself in work. Even his relaxations were 
of an eager, exhaustive kind. He had tremendous phy- 
sical strength, great animal spirits, and an unlimited 
belief in himself and admiration for himself. It was im- 

D 



34 TJie Leaders of Reforjn. 1 792-1840 

possible not to admire his genius, and not sometimes to 
laugh at his vanity. He was a great popular and par- 
liamentary orator. His style was too rugged, and at the 
same time too diffuse, for a time like ours. His passion 
would now seem to us like that of a madman ; his action 
and his gestures would be intolerable to our Parliament. 
He sometimes seemed to foam at the mouth in the fury 
of debate, and on one occasion at least he went through 
the form of dropping to his knees in order to make his 
appeal to the Peers more impressive. At the time of 
which we are now speaking, he filled a vast space in the 
public mind. Untiring, restless, insatiable of praise, 
greedy of power, capable of commanding a public meet- 
ing almost as completely as O'Connell, he naturally be- 
came a powerful force in the promotion of great political 
and social reforms. He had rendered immense service 
to the cause of liberty and to that of education. He had 
been the most uncompromising enemy to the system of 
slavery in the colonies. It was his voice which denounced 
"the wild and guilty phantasy " that man can have pro- 
perty in man. He was a law reformer. He was one of 
the founders of what may be called popular education, 
and an advocate of religious equality. He threw himself 
for a time with all the wild, coarse, animal energy of his 
nature into the cause of political reform. 

But the man who rendered the most decided service 
to the cause, and who, during the whole of his active 
career, was more distinctly identified with reform than 
any other statesman, was Lord John Russell. Russell 
was not a man of genius, and he never became an orator. 
But he had strength of character and of will, and he saw 
his way clearly before him. During the whole of his long 
career Ke was never turned aside by a personal motive 
from any principle of policy. He was a ready, keen, 



1 8 1 1 - 1 8 The Luddites. 35 

penetrating debater. The force of his cold, quiet sarcasm 
told irresistibly on any weak point in an opponent's 
argument. He had sat at the feet of Fox. He loved 
literature as well as politics, and was a personal friend of 
most of the great literary men of his time. Lord John 
Russell, more than any other man, kept the light of 
political reform burning during seasons when it seemed 
almost certain that it must go out altogether. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EVE OF THE REFORM STRUGGLE. 

Parliament assembled on February 4, 1830. It opened 
under conditions of peculiar gloom. The Royal speech 
spoke of the general distress from which commerce and 
agriculture, and all the classes that depended upon either, 
were suffering. The speech, of course, did not do more 
than barely allude to the distressed condition of the 
time. The state of the working men in many parts of the 
country was little better than that of starvation. The 
best of the silk weavers were earning only an average of 
eight or riine shillings a week, and in some larger towns 
it was declared that many thousands of working people 
were receiving no more than 2}id.2i day, to say nothing of 
the large numbers who were out of employment altogether. 
Many of the working-men ascribed the depression in 
trade to the introduction of machinery, and there were 
organised gangs of workmen going through the country 
trying to break and destroy all machinery which they 
believed to interfere with their trade. They followed the 
example of the Luddites of an earlier day, who used to go 
about in bands, breaking frames and machinery, starting 
riots in various places, and coming into collision with 



^6 The Eve of the JRefor?n Struggle. 1830 

the military, and of whom several were tried and executed 
from the year 1811 to 181 8. The Luddites took their 
name from a silly creature, really an idiot, named Ludd, 
who had once broken some weaving machinery in a fit 
of passion. Perhaps the Luddites will be remembered by 
many persons in our time, rather because of Byron's al- 
lusion to them than by reason of any historical mark 
they have made. In December 1816, Byron wrote a 
little ballad, which he called the " Song of the Lud- 
dite," in which he declares that : 

As the Liberty lads o'er the sea 

Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood, 

So we boys, we, 
Will die fighting, or live free, 
And down with all kings but King Ludd. 

Byron wrote to Moore apropos of this poem, asking 
" Are you not near the Luddites ? By the Lord, if there's 
a row, but I'll be among ye. How go on the weavers, 
the breakers of frames, the Lutherans of politics, the re- 
formers ?" 

The policy of the Luddites was foolishly followed out 
by some of the working-men in 1 830. It is likely enough 
that the machinery did for the moment disturb their trade 
and interfere with employment, and men with wives and 
families suffering from starvation cannot be expected to 
have the patient temper of economists and philosophers. 
It is certain, however, that the outbursts of anger and 
violence tended only to make their condition more dis- 
tressed and miserable, and that the machinery against 
which they protested was destined to multiply the opera-, 
tions of the trade and to give additional and vastly in- 
creased employment to numbers of men and women. 
The country was in such deep distress that Lord Stanhope 



1830 The Need of the Reform Bill. 37 

in the House of Lords, moved an amendment to the Ad- 
dress, stating that agriculture, trade, commerce, and manu- 
factures had never before at any one time been in so disas- 
trous a condition. The Duke of Welhngton, on the other 
hand, contended in the true fashion of the Minister of 
State, that although there was suffering in some parts of 
the country, yet on the whole the condition of things was 
improving. It is hardly necessary to point out how 
illusory an answer this is to a special appeal. There was 
deep distress in certain parts of the country, which, 
according to the argument pressed on the Government, 
might be relieved by a wise system of commercial legis- 
lation. It was no answer whatever to such an appeal to 
say that the country on the whole was more prosperous 
than it had been before. It would be just as reasonable 
if some complaint were made of the want of fire- 
engines in a particular quarter of the town which had 
lately been ravaged by a conflagration, to say that, 
taking the country all over, the average of fires was less 
than it had been for some years previous. In the House 
of Commons Sir Francis Burdett denounced the Duke of 
Wellington as " shamefully insensible to the suffering and 
distress which were painfully apparent through the land." 
O'Connell, in the course of the debate, declared that 
many thousands of persons had to subsist in Ireland on 
three halfpence per day. A tolerably successful working- 
man sometimes got 7.s. 6d. a. week, and at this time the 
four-pound loaf cost lod. Sir James Graham suggested 
a reduction in the salaries of Government officials. Mr. 
Hume, true to the purpose of his life, proposed that 
8,000,000/. should be saved from the expenses of the 
army and navy. Mr. Poulett Thompson moved for a 
Committee of Inquiry into the whole system of taxation. 
Sir Robert Peel accepted none of these suggestions and 



;^S The Eve of the Reform Struggle. 1830 

recommendations. The Ministry managed tolerably well 
in their financial measures, and contrived to have a con- 
siderable surplus to show. The early part of the session 
was marked, so far as political reform was concerned, only 
by Lord John Russell's introduction of a measure to give 
members to Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds, and one 
introduced by Mr. O'Connell to introduce universal 
suffrage and vote by ballot. Both these measures were 
rejected. 

Nothing could well have seemed gloomier than the 
prospect of popular reform in England. The most 
earnest and courageous of the reformers must have felt 
their spirits sink within them as the early months of 1830 
went on. The unforeseen, however, then as in other 
cases, came to pass. Just at the moment when the light 
seemed on the point of dying out, events occurred which 
combined to set it suddenly aflame again, more brightly 
than ever. The first of these events was the death of 
George IV. on June 26, 1830. George had begun his 
public life as an avowed Whig. He was a friend and 
boon companion of Fox and Sheridan. It is certain 
that Fox and Sheridan believed him to be their close 
political ally as well. There was in fact a Prince's party 
in the State. The Prince of Wales was believed to be 
the direct opponent of the policy favoured and enforced 
by the King. The Whig millennium was looked for 
when George should succeed to his father's throne. It 
was in his eagerness to have George made Regent during 
his father's first attack of insanity that Fox actually pro- 
pounded the doctrine that the Prince of Wales was 
entitled to become Regent independently of any decision 
of Parliament. This strange profession of political faith 
caused Pitt to declare in exultation that he would "un- 
Whig " the gentleman for the rest of his life. Fox, indeed, 



1830 George IV. 39 

had for the moment been betrayed into a repudiation of 
one of the first and most essential principles of Liberal- 
ism. No wonder that his great rival exulted. 

George had given new hope to Ireland, and was at 
one time all but adored by the Irish people. Moore 
sang his praise and O'Connell glorified him, at the time 
when Byron was heaping unmeasured scorn on him in 
" the Irish avatar." Byron himself, indeed, had once be- 
lieved in the Prince. Moore afterwards denounced him 
bitterly in song. George disappointed others as well as 
Moore. Once before he had turned suddenly against the 
Whigs, and separated himself publicly and formally from 
them. In May, 1792, he delivered in the House of Lords 
a speech in which he announced that he could not accept 
the views on the French Revolution which Fox and his 
friends still continued to hold. There was after this a 
renewal more than once of the friendly relations between 
the Prince and Fox, and the hopes of the Whigs were 
drawn to the Prince Regent again. It was long after this 
that Fox, in his eagerness for the Prince, laid himself 
open to the rebuke of Pitt, and it was still later, and after 
he had become king, that George revisited Ireland. But 
from the moment when the Prince became Regent he 
showed that the Whigs had nothing to expect from him, 
and in his reign as Sovereign he held distinctly and 
doggedly by the principles and the political creed of the 
Tories. George has left a poor name in English history. 
His vices were many; his virtues few. But it is not 
perhaps sufficiently borne in mind that he was kept in a 
pitiful state of pupilage by his father's orders during 
years that almost approached to manhood. His life was 
spent up to about the age of eighteen in a sort of scho- 
lastic imprisonment, now in Windsor, now in Kew, and 
now in Buckingham Palace. He was treated by his fa- 



40 The Eve of the Reform St7'ttggle. 1S30 

ther very much as Joe Willett, in " Barnaby Rudge " is 
treated by Old John. Joe Willett, however, could run 
away and George could not ; and Joe Willett had a noble 
nature and George certainly had not. But it is only right 
to point out that the career of George, on his emerging at 
last from duresse, was not very unlike what reasonable 
men would have looked for as the result of sudden li- 
cense after long and undue restraint. 

Everyone had come to know that reform had no 
chance while George IV. lived. When he died, there- 
fore, the hopes of the reformers sprang up anew. Wil- 
liam IV. succeeded, and although William had strongly 
opposed Liberal policy and Liberal principles in many 
important questions, yet it was considered that he came 
to the throne unpledged on the subject of Parliamentary 
reform. It was hoped that he would be glad to renew 
the popularity of his early days, and it was presumed 
that the influence of public opinion could not be without 
some effect on his reign. The Duke of Wellington and 
Sir Robert Peel were the leaders of the Ministry when 
George IV. died. "The Sailor King," as he was called, 
was thought to be of a genial and conciliatory disposi- 
tion, and it was supposed that men of more progressive 
political opinions than Wellington or Peel might have 
some chance of influencing his public conduct. 

Parliament was dissolved, by proclamation, on July 
24, 1830. The Liberals went to the country full of hope 
and spirit, although they little dreamed that an event 
which was about to happen in another land was destined 
to give a new and most important impulse to the cause 
which they had at heart. 

It might be thought that men whose principles were 
so poorly represented among the constituencies could 
have little hopes from the general election. But at all 



1830 The IVJiigs. 41 

times, even under the narrowest suffrage, it is certain 
that in a country like this a strong public feeling exer- 
cises some control over the votes of the electoral body. 
No matter how great the influence of landlords and local 
magnates, no matter how vast and lavish the bribery and 
corruption, yet a vigorous breath of public opinion does 
in some manner contrive to force its way into the elec- 
toral body, and to impel them in the direction which the 
popular sentiment is taking. Besides, it must be owned 
that so far as territorial influence and influence of money 
went, the Whigs of that day were not ashamed to com- 
pete, as far as possible, with their opponents. The state 
of the franchise in the great towns, as we have already 
explained, left the constituency peculiarly open to the in- 
fluences of bribery, and there can be no doubt that the 
Liberals, whenever they had a chance, availed them- 
selves of the opportunity thus given. At all events, the 
two parties were not so entirely disproportionate in 
strength as the condition of things might lead a reader to 
expect. 

Suddenly, however, the unlooked-for event occurred 
which turned the balance in favour of the Whigs, and 
roused a popular feeling all over the country which the 
narrow electorate found it difficult to resist. This event 
was the Revolution of 1830 in France. Everyone who 
studies with any attention the history of England, and 
especially of political and Parliamentary movements in 
England, will have observed the remarkable manner in 
which events in this country follow the lead of events on 
the Continent. If there were direct electrical or magnetic 
connection between Continental Europe and the English 
public mind there could hardly be a more direct connec- 
tion between events on this side of the Channel and 
events on the other. Revolution on the Continent always 



42 Tlie Eve of the Reform Struggle. 1830 

in the first instance impels the cause of popular agitation in 
this country. Then, it may be, the revolution goes too far, 
and reaction sets in here for a time. Reform is dreaded 
and detested, and men think they can hardly go far 
enough back in the opposite direction. Then, again, it 
may be that the wildness of the revolutionary movement 
subsides in France, or in whatever Continental countries 
it dominates. Institutions seem to emerge safer and 
stronger than before from the welter of parties, and at 
once a new effect is produced in England, and the pop- 
ular movement receives a fresh impulse. The Revolution 
in France took place because the French Ministry, dis- 
appointed at finding that each election produced a Cham- 
ber of Deputies more opposed to the arbitrary power of 
the King and his advisers, and that the journals became 
more and more outspoken in their condemnation of the 
system of government, issued a body of ordinances, 
changing practically the whole Constitution of the coun- 
Xrf, and superseding or destroying the liberty of the 
Press. The French Ministry overdid their part. They 
went far beyond any limit which the people of Paris 
could tolerate. There was an insurrection for which the 
Government were wholly unprepared, and after the fa- 
mous struggle in Paris, known as the Three Days of 
July, the King abdicated in favour of his grandson, but 
abdicated in vain. The Revolution was complete so far 
as the elder branch of the family was concerned. Charles 
escaped to England. The white flag, the symbol of 
French legitimacy, was flung away ; the tricolor was sub- 
stituted ; the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, became 
King of the French, " King of the Barricades," as he was 
afterwards called, and crowned his strange life of soldier- 
ing, of exile, of school teaching, of wandering, by be- 
coming for the time the most popular monarch of Europe. 



1S30 Defeat of the Toiy Gove7'nmcnt. ^ 

This event promised to bring about an entirely new 
chapter in the histor}^ of France. The effect on Enghsh 
popular opinion was so strong, that after the general elec- 
tion the Tory Government found that it had lost at least 
fifty votes in the House of Commons, and that its influ- 
ence all over the country was reduced to little better than 
a nullity. 



CHAPTER V. 

INTRODUCTION OF THE REFORM BILL, 

The new Parliament met on October 26, 1830. During 
the interval between the Revolution in France and the 
assembling of Parliament there had been many symp- 
toms in England of a widespread popular discontent, and 
a determination to have some change in the policy of the 
Government. Incendiary fires alarmed many parts of the 
country in September and October, great public meetings 
were held in various cities and towns, and tumultuous 
demands were made for the dismissal of the Tory Min- 
isters. 

The actual work of the session began on November 2. 
On that day the King came to the House and delivered 
his speech in person. A debate arose in the House of 
Lords on the Address, and during this discussion the 
Duke of Wellington made his declaration with regard to 
parliamentary reform. Replying to a speech from Lord 
Grey, the Duke declared distinctly that he had never 
read or heard of any measure which could in any de- 
gree satisfy his mind " that the state of representation 
could be improved or be rendered more satisfactory to 
the country at large than at the present moment." " I am 
fully convinced," he said, " that the country possesses a 



42 Introduction of the Reform Bill. 1830 

legislature which answers all the good purposes of legis- 
lation, and this to a greater degree than any legislature 
has answered in any other country whatever." He went 
further. He declared that not only the legislature but 
the system of representation possessed deservedly the full 
and entire confidence of the country. He therefore de- 
clared plainly that he was not prepared to bring forward 
any measure of reform. Not only, he said, was he not 
prepared to bring forward any such measure, but : "I will 
at once declare that, as far as I am concerned, so long as 
I hold any station in the Government of the country, I 
shall always feel it my duty to resist such a measure when 
proposed by others." 

The Tory Ministry from that moment became odious 
to the people. Never before perhaps was an administra- 
tion so unpopular in England. The "Patriot-King," on 
the other hand, was extolled to the skies, as the most 
hopeful Prince who had ever mounted the throne. The 
Vv'higs now believed they saw their way to the over- 
throw of the Tory Ministry, and the Ministry began them- 
selves to feel that they could not long stand up against 
the demands of the country. The end came about per- 
haps even sooner than they had expected. On Novem- 
ber 14, Sir Henry Parnell, afterwards Lord Congleton, 
brought forward a motion in the House of Commons for 
the appointment of a select committee " to take into con- 
sideration the estimates and amounts proposed by His 
Majesty regarding the civil list." The Government 
strongly opposed the motion, but it was carried in spite of 
their teeth by a majority of twenty-nine. The question 
was hardly one of capital importance in itself, but the 
Government foresaw that if they did not resign on that occa- 
sion they would probably be forced to surrender very soon 
after on some subject of graver moment. They therefore 



iCjo Lo?-d Grcy^ s Ministry. 45 

thought it wise to tender their resignation the morning 
after their defeat. Perhaps too they thought it would be 
a clever party stroke to resign after a defeat which seemed 
to exhibit them as champions and defenders of the royal 
prerogative in opposition to Whig assailants. At all 
events, they made up their minds to tender their resigna- 
tion. The resignation was accepted, and the same even- 
ing both Houses of Parliament knew that the Tory Min- 
istry had come to an end. 

Lord Grey was at once sent for by the King and invited 
to form a Ministry. This was of course only what every- 
one expected. Lord Grey consented to take ofiice on 
condition that the reform of Parliament should be made 
a Cabinet measure. Some difficulty arose during the ar- 
rangements about finding a position for Lord Brougham. 
Lord Brougham was the most powerful Whig orator in 
the House of Commons. He had a considerable number 
of followers of his own, and what with his great abilities 
and energies, and the strength of his popularity, he might 
have made it hardly possible for a WTiig ministry to keep 
in power without his support or in spite of him. Some of 
the Whigs thought there was no living with him or with- 
out him. But at all events it was necessary to make the 
experiment of living with him, since living without him 
would have been manifestly impossible. Lord Grey of- 
fered him the place of Attorney-General, which Lord 
Brougham absolutely declined. Lord Grey suggested 
that he should be Master of the Rolls and remain still in 
Parliament, but to this the King objected. The Prime 
Minister pointed out to the King that he could ha.rdly 
venture to carry on the Government if Lord Brougham 
remained in the House of Commons under the conviction 
that he had been ill used by the party. William then 
suggested that he should be Lord Chancellor, and Lord 



46 Introduction of the Reform Bill. 1830 

Grey explained that this was what he himself would 
have been disposed to recommend, but that the King 
had refused to allow Lord Brougham to be appointed to 
the inferior office of Master of the Rolls. The King's 
objection, however, was reasonable enough. Events 
afterwards proved that if William had wished to disarm 
Lord Brougham the course taken was politic and wise. 
Brougham, as Master of the Rolls, was to have retained 
his seat in the House of Commons, and would have been 
a most formidable power there, either against the Min- 
istry, or the King, or both combined. As Lord Chan- 
cellor he sank into a position comparatively uninfluential. 
He hesitated for a while about accepting the place, but 
at last he was persuaded into it by Lord Grey and Lord 
Althorp. 

Lord Grey of course was at the head of the new 
Government. Lord Durham was Lord Privy Seal. Lord 
Althorp became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
leader of the House of Commons. Lord Althorp was a 
plain, straightforward country gentleman, with a great 
taste for farming and no personal inclination for political 
life. He was not even a tolerably good speaker. But 
his plain, homespun ability, his straightforward manners, 
his sound judgment and his absolute disinterestedness 
made him a genuine power in Parliament. Perhaps the 
House of Commons has never had a leader in whom it 
placed a fuller confidence. Once in replying to some 
opponent, Lord Althorp remarked that the gentleman's 
arguments v/ere plausible but unsound. " I do not," he 
said composedly, "recollect now the reasons which 
prove his objections to be groundless ; but I know that 
those reasons were perfectly satisfactory to my own 
mind." Lord Russell, who tells the story, adds that 
"the House voted, by a great majority, against the 



1830 Lord Grey' s Mifiistry. 47 

plausible arguments, and in favour of the unknown re- 
plies." This assuredly was carrying confidence about as 
far as devotion itself could bear it. Lord Melbourne was 
Home Secretary, and Lord Palmerston entered for the 
first time into that office with which his career and his 
fame were afterwards especially identified — the office of 
Secretary for Foreign Afiairs. Lord John Russell was 
Paymaster of the Forces, and had not a seat in the Cabi- 
net. Mr. Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby, became Irish 
Secretary. The Lord Chancellor for Ireland, Lord Plun- 
ket, was, as a parliamentary orator, at least the peer of 
his English colleague Lord Brougham. 

Immediately after Lord Grey had formed his Ministry, 
Lord Durham asked Lord John Russell to call upon him 
at his house in Cleveland Row. Lord Durham there 
explained that Lord Grey wished him to consult Lord 
John with respect to the formation of a committee to 
draw up the outlines of a plan of political reform. After 
some deliberation it was agreed to invite Sir James 
Graham, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord 
Duncannon, Commissioner of Woods and Forests, to 
form a committee for the purpose, with Lord Durham 
and Lord John Russell. Lord Durham then asked Lord 
John Russell to draw for the consideration of the com- 
mittee, a sketch of the principal heads of the measure o^ 
reform which he could submit to Lord Grey, and which 
if approved by Lord Grey would be proposed to the 
Cabinet. Lord John Russell himself, in his work, " The 
English Government and Constitution," thus describes 
the principle on which he proceeded in shaping a Reform 
Bill. " It was not my duty," he says, " to cut the body of 
our old parent to pieces and to throw it into a Medea's 
cauldron with the hopes of reviving the strength and 
vigour of youth." He made up his mind not "to deviate 



48 Introchtction of the Reform Bill. 1830 

from the track of the Constitution into the maze of fancy, 
or the wilderness of abstract rights." " It was desirable, 
in short, as it appeared to me, while sweeping away- 
gross abuses, to avail ourselves as far as possible of the 
existing frame and body of our institutions. Thus, if the 
due weight and influence of property could be maintained 
by preserving the representation of a proportion of the 
small boroughs with an improved franchise, it was de- 
sirable rather to build on the old foundations than to 
indulge our fancy or our conceit in choosing a new site 
and erecting on new soil— perhaps on sand — an edifice 
entirely different from all which had hitherto existed." 
But Lord John Russell goes on to say that at the same 
time he was deeply impressed with Lord Grey's convic- 
tion that none but a large measure would be a safe mea- 
sure ; " that to nibble at disfranchisement and cramp 
reform by pedantic adherence to existing rights, would 
be to deceive expectation, to whet appetite, and to bring 
on that revolution which it was our object to avert." 

Lord John Russell accordingly drew up a plan which 
he presented to Lord Durham, and on which Lord Dur- 
ham noted certain amendments of his own. Lord John 
Russell, in the introduction to his " English Government 
and Constitution," publishes his sketch of a reform bill. 
It was written on a single sheet of letter paper, and is 
reproduced with Lord Durham's original corrections, 
erasures and alterations. The first paragraph proposes 
that fifty boroughs of the smallest population according 
to the census of 1821 should be disfranchised. Lord 
Durham writes " approved " across this clause, and adds 
in the margin, " this would disfranchise all boroughs cf 
fourteen hundred inhabitants." Clause two proposes 
that fifty more of the least considerable should send in 
future only one member to Parliafnent. This also Lord 



1830 Lord John Russeir s Reform Bill . 49 

Durham marks with approval, and writes in the margin 
" this would apply to boroughs of three thousand inha- 
bitants." Clause three proposes that persons qualified 
to serve on juries should have the right of voting. This 
clause Lord Durham strikes out. Clause four recom- 
mends that no person should vote in cities or boroughs, 
except in the city of London, Westminster and South- 
wark, unless he is a householder rated at 10/. a year, and 
had paid his parochial taxes for three years within three 
months after they became due, and had resided in the 
city or borough for six months previous to the election. 
On that clause Lord Durham makes no remark. Clause 
five proposes that eighteen large towns shall send mem- 
bers to Parliament, that the unrepresented parts of Lon- 
don shall send four or six additional members, and that 
twenty counties shall send two additional members each. 
All this Lord Durham approves. Clause six gives the 
right of voting in the new towns to householders rated 
at 10/. a year, or persons qualified to serve on juries. 
Lord Durham strikes out the jury qualification. Clause 
seven gave to copy holders and leaseholders having an 
interest of more than twenty-one years a right to vote in 
the counties. This Lord Durham approves. Clause 
eight relates to the poll to be taken in the hundreds of 
divisions of counties ; clause nine to the closing of the 
poll in cities and boroughs on the second day. Clause 
ten proposes that no new right of voting shall be acquired 
in counties by any property of less value than 10/. a 
year. This tenth and last clause Lord Durham strikes 
out. The Committee discussed the right of voting for 
boroughs and agreed that it should be uniform, their 
opinion being that the freemen and the scot and lot 
voters (a class of persons who paid rates not on the 
same scale as their wealthier neighbours, but were rated 

E 



50 I/itroduction of the Reform Bill. 1830 

in proportion to their means) had, in process of time, 
become generally either dependent or corrupt. They 
endeavoured to find a qualification which should give the 
vote to the greatest number of independent men, and 
yet be as nearly as possible an equivalent for the old 
household right of voting of the seventeenth century, 
and this qualification they believed they had arrived at 
when they fixed the borough franchise at 10/. At one 
of the last sittings of the Committee vote by ballot was 
introduced into the scheme, we believe at the suggestion 
of Lord Durham, and adopted by the Committee ; this 
proposal was afterwards omitted by the Cabinet, and it 
had been strongly opposed in the Committee by Lord 
John Russell. Thus altered, the plan, approved by Lord 
Grey, was adopted by the Cabinet. Lord Grey sub- 
mitted it to the King, by whom, says Lord John Russell, 
"it was readily and cheerfully sanctioned." 

The ministerial secret was well kept. It was thought 
to be of great importance that the enemies of all reform 
should not know what the Government had to propose 
until the moment came for introducing the scheme to 
Parliament. More than thirty persons were in the secret, 
and yet so much discretion was shown by all that not the 
faintest whisper of the contents of the Reform Bill got 
out before the hour of its actual presentation to the 
House of Commons. The Bill was introduced on 
Tuesday, March i, 1831. Lord John Russell had been 
specially selected by the Government to introduce the 
Bill, because of the perseverance and ability with which 
he had advocated the cause of reform. It is worthy of 
notice that Lord John Russell not only introduced the 
Reform Bill, but was the first to adopt the name of 
Reformer as the designation of his own party, and to 
recognize the existence of the word Conservative as a 



1 8 3 1 TJie Bill brought in, 51 

description of the opposite school. The first of March 
was a day of intense excitement and even tumult in the 
House of Commons. Never before in that generation 
had there been so great a crowd of persons eager to get 
places in the House. Every inch of available space was 
occupied long before the business of the House began. 
Wlien the doors of the various galleries were opened 
there was struggle, clamour, and confusion such as we 
generally associate with the gallery entrance of a theatre 
on Boxing-night. Indeed, it required a threat from the 
Speaker that he would have the galleries cleared before 
order could be restored and silence obtained. Then 
there was a further wrangle among the members them- 
selves, some complaining that their seats, although 
marked with their cards, had been taken by others. 

At last Lord John Russell's time came. He began 
his speech in a low voice amid profound silence. He 
never was an orator capable of commanding the emo- 
tions of a large and popular assembly. His manner, 
even at its best, was cold and inanimate. On this occa- 
sion he was naturally made nervous by the task he had 
before him, and he is described as having spoken for the 
most part in a lower tone and with less animation even 
than was usual with him. Lord John Russell explained 
that the Ministry wished to take their stand between two 
extreme hostile parties, neither agreeing with the bigotry 
of those who would reject all reform, nor with the fanati- 
cism of those who would admit only one plan of reform. 
He showed that at an early period the ancient constitu- 
tion of the country recognized fully the right of popular 
representation, and that a statute had provided that each 
county should send to the Commons two knights of the 
shire, each city two burgesses, and each borough two 
members. This practice, however, fell into disuse ; 



52 Introduction of the Refortn Bill. 1S31 

innovations and alterations crept in which all operated 
against the representative principle, and though at the 
early period to which Lord John Russell referred the 
House of Commons, as he explained, did represent the 
people of England, there could be no doubt that the 
House of Commons as it existed in March, 1 831, had 
long ceased to have any really representative character. 
One passage in Lord John Russell's speech was very 
remarkable, and has often been quoted. He assumed 
the case of a stranger arriving in England, finding it un- 
equalled in wealth, and enjoying more civilization and 
more enlightenment than any country before it, finding 
that it prided itself on its freedom, and on its representa- 
tives elected from its population at stated periods to act as 
the guardians and preservers of that freedom. He de- 
scribes the anxiety of this stranger to know how the people 
formed and secured their representation and chose their 
representatives. " What, then, would be his surprise," 
Lord John Russell said, "if he were taken by the guide 
whom he had asked to conduct him to one of those 
places of election, to a green mound and told that that 
green mound sent two members to Parliament ? or to be 
taken to a stone wall with three niches in it, and told 
that those three niches sent two members to Parliament ? 
or if he were shown a green park with many signs of 
flourishing vegetable life, but none of human habitation, 
and told that that green park sent two members to 
Parliament ?" He then went on to say : " If this stranger 
were told all this and was astonished at hearing it, how 
much more astonished would he not be if he was to see 
large and populous towns, full of enterprise, and in- 
dustry, and intelligence, containing vast magazines and 
every species of manufacture, and were to be told that 
these did not send any representatives to Parliament ?" 



iSji Lord Johft RiisseW s Speech. 53 

Lord John Russell therefore proposed to deal with three 
chief grievances ; first, the nomination of members by- 
individuals ; second, the election by close corporations ; 
and third, the expense of elections. He proposed to de- 
prive certain extinct and nominal boroughs of the fran- 
chise altogether. Every borough which in 1821 had less 
than 2,000 inhabitants should lose altogether the right of 
sending a member to Parliament. No borough which 
had not more than 4,000 inhabitants should send more 
than one member to Parliament. By this means the 
number of the members would be reduced by 168. 
Then came the question as to the reorganization and 
extension of the franchise. Lord John Russell proceeded 
to get rid of various complicated franchises, such as the 
franchise for householders paying scot and lot, burgesses, 
capital burgesses, burgage holders, freeholders, freeman, 
pot wallopers, and various other devices. He proposed 
to simplify the franchise and make it homogeneous in 
principle. A vote was to be given to each householder 
in boroughs paying rates for houses of the yearly value 
of 10/. and upwards. Resident voters, under the old 
qualification, were, however, to be allowed to retain their 
right during life, but the qualification would expire 
gradually with the voters. In counties copyholders to 
the value of 10/. a year, qualified to serve on juries, were 
to have the vote. Leaseholders for not less than twenty- 
one years, whose annual rent was not less than 50/., were 
to enjoy the privilege also. The Government did not 
propose to fill up the whole of the 168 vacancies, as they 
believed that the House was already too large in its 
numbers. It was proposed that seven large towns 
should send two members each, and twenty other towns 
one member each. The seven towns to send two mem- 
bers were Manchester (with Salford), Birmingham, 



54 Introduction of the Reform Bill. 

Leeds, Greenwich, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, and 
Sunderla^nd, The Metropolis, according to Lord John 
Russell's plan, was to have eight additional members, 
two to each of the following boroughs : Tower Hamlets, 
Holborn, Finsbury, and Lambeth. Each of the three 
Ridings of Yorkshire was to have two members, and 
twenty-six counties, in each of which the inhabitants ex- 
ceeded 1 50,000, were to have two additional members. 
In order to meet the enormous expense of elections it was 
proposed that the poll should be taken in separate dis- 
tricts, so that no voter should have to travel more than 
fifteen miles to give his vote. In Scotland the suf- 
frage was to be given to every copyholder to the annual 
value of 10/., and to the holders of leases of ten years 
paying 50/. rent, Several towns were to have an in- 
crease in their representation, and thirteen districts 
composed of district boroughs, united for the purpose 
of representation, were to return one member each. In 
Ireland the right of voting was to be given to all holders 
of houses or land to the value of 10/. a year. Belfast, 
Limerick, and Waterford were to have representation. 
The number of persons who were to be entitled to vote 
under this Bill and who had no previous franchise were 
to be, in the counties about 110,000, in the provincial 
towns, 50,000, in London 95,000, in Scotland 50,000, in 
Ireland about 40,000 ; in all, half a million of persons 
were to be added to the constituency of the House of 
Commons. 

The opposition to the proposals of the Government 
began at once. It is not usual in Parliament to debate 
much on the mere request of a Minister for leave to 
bring in a Bill, but on this occasion no one cared much 
to stick closely to precedent. Lord John Russell's mo- 
tion was opposed by Sir Robert Harry Inghs, member 



1 83 1 The Oppositio?i to the Bill. 55 

for the University of Oxford, a man whose curious par- 
liamentary career is remembered even in our own time. 
He was an intelligent man, a man of education, of strict 
political integrity and honour, but he was opposed to any 
kind of reform which took the direction of popular suf- 
frage. He was opposed, indeed, to any change whatever 
in the existing institutions of the country. We have 
hardly any public man now who represents the kind of 
political superstition which was illustrated in the honest 
creed of Sir Robert Inglis. Change of all kind was to 
him odious, nor could he see any wisdom in accepting 
even an inevitable change. He insisted that reform 
was only revolution. He insisted that Lord John Rus- 
sell's Bill would destroy all the natural influence of 
education, rank, and property. He went still farther. 
He argued gravely that no such principle as that which 
connects taxation and representation was known to the 
English Constitution. He denied that there was any 
idea whatever of the representative principle in the 
political system of England. He insisted that no town 
or borough had ever been called into parliamentary 
existence because it was large and populous, or shut 
out from it because it was small. The principle, he 
said, on which Parliament was founded was that the 
Sovereign should invite whomsoever he pleased to con- 
sult with him on the affairs of the countr}^ He justified 
even the purchase of boroughs, and insisted that if they 
were not to be bought the noblemen of the country could 
hardly be represented in Parliament at all. He defended 
the small boroughs, the " close and rotten boroughs," as 
they were called in th^ course of the debate, and con- 
tended but that for them Parliament would lose some of 
its brightest ornaments. This argument, indeed, we have 
heard repeated at a period much nearer to our own time, 



56 Introduction of the Reform Bill. 1031 

and by a man of very different order of intelligence from 
Sir Robert Inglis ; by no less a person than Mr. Glad- 
stone himself. Sir Robert Inglis declared that a torrent 
of mob oratory was a curse to the country, and was used 
for the purpose of influencing the lowest and the most 
debasing passions, and by " mob oratory " we may say 
he meant any kind of eloquence used for the purpose 
of asserting popular rights. Sir Charles Wetherell was 
another representative of a political school which can 
hardly be said to exist in our time. He went, if possible, 
still further than Sir Robert Inglis in his opposition to 
reform, but he had not Sir Robert Inglis's ability, and his 
Toryism was more calculated to make the House laugh 
than to make opponents angry. 

Sir Robert Peel opposed the introduction of the Bill 
on grounds more plausible and with better effect. He 
declared that he cared not whether the House was dis- 
solved or not, and that he should not consider himself 
fit for the performance of a single legislative duty if he 
permitted such a menace to influence him. He con- 
demned those who had " excited the people to a pitch of 
frenzy, and spurred their lazy indifference to an accumu- 
lation of revolutionary clamour." Common prudence, he 
said, would have forborne introducing a measure of the 
kind at such a crisis in our foreign and domestic relations, 
when causes of fresh excitement ought to have been 
avoided. He insisted that "the inevitable tendency" of 
the Bill would be "to sever every link of connection 
between the poorer classes and that class from which 
their representatives are usua.lly chosen." In this one 
argument we think there was some practical justice. 
The tendency of the Bill was undoubtedly to leave the 
poorer classes out of the representation altogether. The 
abolition of the various "fancy franchises," then in exist- 



1 83 1 Peer s Speech. ^>j 

ence, would remove the only chance which the poorer 
classes and the working classes in particular had of in- 
fluencing the elections. Peel's argument in favour of 
the close borough system was based on a principle that 
we can easily understand. He pointed to the number of 
men who had entered the House for boroughs which the 
present Bill would disfranchise. Lord North, Burke, Pitt, 
Flood, Fox, Plunket, Canning, Windham, Huskisson, 
Brougham, Romilly, and several others were all first re- 
turned for close boroughs. When by caprice or v/ant of 
money, or otherwise, some eminent men were deprived 
of larger seats they were rescued by some of the close 
boroughs, and their valuable labours thus secured to 
their country. Sheridan defeated at Stafford found 
shelter at Ilchester; Windham rejected by Norwich was 
received at Higham Ferrers ; Lord Grey refused by 
Northumberland was accepted by Tavistock. This was 
the kind of argument with which England was made 
familiar in later years. It was an argument used by Sir 
Robert Peel's greatest pupil, Mr. Gladstone, against a 
further disfranchisement of small boroughs. It is plain, 
however, that any such advantage attaching to the exist- 
ence of small boroughs is only one casual benefit to be 
measured against a great many certain and inevitable 
disadvantages. The close boroughs were nests of cor- 
ruption, where they were not actually pocket boroughs and 
the property of some peer or landowner. Neither the 
system of corruption nor the system of nomineeship can 
be said to be creditable or endurable in a civilised coun- 
try. Against these gross and monstrous defects we have 
to set off the single and chance advantage that a close 
borough, owned by an intelligent master, might sometimes 
be the means of returning an able man to the House of 
Commons. This is all that can be said in justification of 



58 Introduction of the Reform Bill. 1831 

the system, and it is not much to say. Besides, it is plain 
that with the growth of education, of independence, and 
of pubhc spirit the close boroughs would lose entirely 
this preponderating advantage. As large and popular 
constituencies grow more enlightened and more inde- 
pendent they would show themselves not less willing to 
return distinguished men than the closest borough owned 
by the most liberal proprietor. In our own day, we see 
that men of talent, without family or wealth, have a much 
better chance, in the large and populous boroughs, than 
they would have in a small close borough the property of 
a peer or a landlord. Where the small borough was not 
the property of a peer or a landlord, it had of course no 
advantage ; for the class of voters who could be bought 
by the dozen for money and beer were not likely to be 
greatly impressed by the genius and the claims of some 
moneyless Sheridan or too conscientious Burke. 

Sir Robert Peel's speech was answered by Mr. Stan- 
ley, afterwards Lord Derby, and answered very effectively 
as to that one point about the small boroughs. What- 
ever advantage, Mr. Stanley said, might be derived from 
that mode of admission would be more than counter- 
balanced by the disadvantage that the class of persons 
thus introduced, whatever their talents, would not be 
looked upon by the people as representatives at all. The 
debate was adjourned to Tuesday, March 8, and was then 
resumed by Mr. O'Connell. He gave the Bill his earnest 
support. There were, he said, objections to it. He 
declared that he himself was by conviction a Radical 
reformer, and that this was not a measure of Radical 
reform. " In every practical mode universal suffrage," he 
contended, " ought to be adopted as a matter of right." 
" The duration of Parliaments should be shortened to the 
time stipulated in the glorious Revolution of 1688, and 



1 8 3 1 O' ConneW s Speech . 5 g 

above all, votes should be taken by ballot." It will now 
perhaps strike many persons as strange to find a man of 
Mr. O'Connell's country and faith describing the Revolu- 
tion which unseated James II. and put William on the 
throne as the "glorious Revolution of i688." But Mr. 
O'Connell was perhaps the last, as he was certainly the 
greatest, of the Irish public men whose political creed 
was on the whole identical with that of the advanced 
English Liberals. Another point in Mr. O'Connell's 
speech is worth noting. He contended that the repre- 
sentation of many parts of the country ought to be 
largely reorganized. He gave as an instance the fact 
that the population of Dublin amounted to considerably 
more than a fourth of the population of London, and that 
on that ground Dublin was fairly entitled to larger repre- 
sentation. The relative position of London and Dubhn 
has marvellously changed since that time. Instead of 
being considerably more than one-fourth of the popula- 
tion of London Dublin is indeed considerably less than 
one-eighth. "When I hear triumphant assertions made," 
said O'Connell, "as to the working well of the present 
system, I would refer you to Ireland for an illustration. 
We have had a complete trial of it for thirty years at 
least, and yet Ireland is one of the most miserable 
countries on the earth, with wretchedness and starvation 
spreading desolation through the land." 

The debate went on during seven nights until an early 
hour of the morning of March lo. Lord Russell then 
replied. The Speaker put the question, "That leave be 
given to bring in a Bill to amend the representation of 
the people in England and Wales." The motion was 
agreed to without a division. The House of Commons 
seldom divides on a motion for the first reading of any 
measure introduced even by a private member, not to say 



6o Introduction of the Reform Bill. iS 



J 



a measure introduced by the Government. Leave was 
then granted to introduce Reform Bills for Scotland and 
for Ireland. It will easily be seen that the measures thus 
introduced must have fallen very far short of the wishes 
of advanced reformers. Everyone who pretended to the 
name of a Radical reformer and who took part in the 
debate expressed a certain sense of disappointm.ent. We 
know that in the Cabinet, by which it was introduced, 
there were influential members who would gladly have 
gone much further than Lord Grey or even Lord John 
Russell would have consented to go. The feeling of the 
country, therefore, was not one of very great enthusiasm 
at first. Perhaps if the Conservative leaders had been 
crafty, not to say prudent men, and had allowed the Bill 
to go through its various stages without serious opposi- 
tion, the interest of the country would have diminished 
and languished, and it might have passed into law 
without arousing any feeling whatever. It ought to have 
been clear to the Conservative leaders that when once 
the Government of Lord Grey had proposed such a 
scheme there could be no quiet until that measure at 
least was carried, and that any decided opposition would 
only tend to inflame the passions and increase the 
demands of the people out of doors. Most of the mode- 
rate reformers in the country understood this perfectly 
well. They saw that nothing would satisfy the public, 
even for the present, short of the full provisions of the 
Bill as introduced by the Government. They dreaded 
lest, emboldened by the lack of popular enthusiasm, the 
Tory leaders should endeavour to defeat the Bill, and 
thus rouse public spirit into a passionate demand for 
some stronger measure. Therefore nearly all the leaders 
of popular movements out of doors lent what we may 
call a generous assistance to Lord Grey and Lord John 



1 031 The Feeling of the Coiiiitiy. Ci 

Russell. Their assistance was generous because th2 
measure was not what they would themselves have pro- 
posed, and, indeed, in many points fell short of the 
scheme which a few months before they thought them- 
selves entitled to expect at the hands of the Whig Go- 
vernment. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PROGRESS OF THE STRUGGLE. 

On March 21, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the 
second reading of the Reform Bill. An amendment was 
moved to the effect that it be read a second time that day 
six months, and a debate took place which lasted two 
nights and was of a somewhat languid character, nearly 
all the great speakers of the House having already ex- 
pressed their opinions and fully argued the question 
from all points of view. Three hundred and two mem- 
bers voted for the second reading, three hundred and one 
for the amendment, and the second reading was therefore 
carried only by a majority of one. The Opposition were 
for the time triumphant. They felt perfectly certain that 
a Bill which passed its second reading by only a majority 
of one could easily be so mutilated in Committee as to 
render it of little harm, even if it should succeed in pass- 
ing through the House of Lords. When the Bill was 
about to go into Committee, General Gascoigne moved 
an instruction declaring that in the opinion of the House, 
" The total number of knights, citizens, and burgesses 
returned to Parliament for that part of the United King- 
dom called England and Wales ought not to be dimin- 
ished." Lord Althorp at once understood the meaning 
of this attempt. It was the first of a series of motions by 



6 2 The Progress of the Struggle. ^ 3 3 1 

which the Opposition intended to interfere with the pro- 
gress of the Committee in a manner which, as he said, if 
submitted to would be fatal to the Bill, or at least so det- 
rimental to it as to render it valueless. When the House 
divided there were 299 votes for General Gascoigne's 
motion and 291 against it. 

The majority against Government was therefore eight. 
The Ministers made up their mind to appeal to the 
country. The King, it appeared, was strongly opposed 
to a dissolution, and had intimated to his Ministers when 
they first came into office that he did not feel inclined to 
dissolve a Parliament so newly elected in order to enable 
them to carry a Reform Bill. Now, however, the Minis- 
ters were determined that Parliament should be pro- 
rogued at once with a view to its speedy dissolution. 
There was a great deal of trouble to induce the King to 
consent to this arrangement. On Lord Brougham fell 
the disagreeable task of announcing to William the 
advice of the Ministry. Something like a scene is said 
to have taken place. The King made all sorts of tech- 
nical objections to the dissolution of Parliament, and 
even, it is said, went to the point of accusing Lord Grey 
and Lord Brougham of something like high treason in 
having made arrangements to call out the Life Guards 
for the closing ceremony of prorogation. At last, how- 
ever, William was prevailed upon, and the dissolution 
took place. Sir Robert Peel was actually speaking, de- 
nouncing the Ministry with a vehemence such as he 
hardly ever showed before or after in the whole course of 
his career, when the knock of "Black Rod" was heard 
to summon the Commons to attend at the bar of the 
Peers and hear the prorogation announced. 

The dissolution of the Parliament was celebrated by 
reformers all over the country with the utmost enthu- 



1831 Parliament Dissolved. 63 

siasm. There were illuminations in London and in most 
of the great towns. At the West-end of London some 
of the anti-reformers who refused to put lights in their 
windows had their houses attacked and the windows 
broken. The Duke of Wellington was one of those who 
became in this way the victim of a popular demonstra- 
tion. The windows of Apsley House which look into 
Hyde Park were broken. The shutters on that side of 
the house were kept closed for years and years after, and 
popular rumour had it that the Duke of Wellington 
refused to allow the windows ever again to be opened 
which the anger of the public had thus vehemently 
assailed. When the elections came on vast sums of 
money were spent on both sides. It is to be feared that 
bribery and corruption were almost as active and as 
flourishing on the one side as on the other. In nearly 
all the great towns the result of the election was in favour 
of reform. General Gascoigne, one of the members for 
Liverpool, the man whose "instructions" to the Com- 
mittee had been the first cause of the dissolution, found 
himself driven out of his seat by an overwhelming 
majority. Nearly all the English county members were 
now pledged to reform. The transformation effected by 
the elections was as great as any ever witnessed even in 
our own days, when complete changes of power are 
familiar to us as the result of an appeal to the country. 

In the new Parliament Lord John Russell and Mr. 
Stanley appeared as Cabinet Ministers. On June 21 the 
King opened Parliament. As he went down to the 
House of Lords he was received with immense enthu- 
siasm both without and within the walls of Westminster 
Palace. On June 24 Lord John Russell introduced a 
second Bill on the subject of Parliamentary Reform. 
Except for some slight alterations in detail the new Re- 



64 The Progress cf the Struggle. 1831 

form Bill was practically the same as the old. The 
second reading was brought forward on July 4, and the 
debate occupied three nights. Three hundred and sixty- 
seven votes were given for the second reading and two 
hundred and thirty-one against it, thus showing a ma- 
jority of one hundred and thirty-six in favour of the 
Government. The Opposition now made up their mind 
to try what they could do by a process more familiar to 
our days than to theirs, the device of Parliamentary ob- 
struction. Repeated motions for adjournment were made, 
on each of which a discussion and a division took place. 
There was something ingenious in the device by which 
the debate was kept up through the whole of the night. 
For example, some member cf the Opposition would 
move "that the Speaker do now leave the Chair." On 
the motion being lost it would be moved " that the debate 
be now adjourned." That motion being lost, somebody 
would again move that the Speaker do leave the Chair, 
and so with alternations of motions for the Speaker to 
leave the Chair, and for the House now to adjourn, the 
whole night was passed through, and it was half-past 
seven in the morning when exhausted members were 
allowed to go home, only to assemble again at three 
o'clock that day. Scenes of this kind were repeated 
again and again. Week after week passed on while de- 
termined Conservatives were talking against time, and 
were making use of the forms of the House with every 
possible ingenuity in order to delay the passing of the 
Bill. The same speeches in almost the same words were 
made over and over again, on every point concerning 
which a discussion could possibly be raised. Reformers 
both in and out of Parliam.ent began to be seriously 
alarmed. It seemed not impossible that, if tactics of this 
kind were pursued, the Governm.ent might find it out of 



1 83 1 ParUamenta7y Obstruction. 65 

their power to carry through the Bill in any time during 
which Parliament could be expected to sit. The disfran- 
chising clauses of the Bill gave immense opportunity for 
debate. As each rotten borough proposed for sacrifice 
came under consideration, opportunity was taken not 
only for defending the existence of that particular place, 
but for repeating all over again the arguments against 
any manner of reform, with which the ears of the House 
had been wearily familiar for months. 

Time and the hour, however, run through the roughest 
day. The extinguishing of the condemned boroughs 
was accomplished at last. The struggle then began over 
the boroughs which were to be reduced from two mem- 
bers to one. The work of obstruction set in again. It was 
arranged and drilled by a systematised process of organ- 
isation. " There was," says Mr. Molesworth in his " His- 
tory of the Reform Bill," "a regular division of labor 
in the work of obstruction, which was arranged and 
superintended by a committee, of which Sir R. Peel was 
the President." " In order to promote delay," says the 
same author, "the leaders of the Opposition stood up 
again, and again repeated the same stale statements and 
arguments, and often in almost the same words." Be- 
tween July 12 and 27, Sir R. Peel spoke forty-eight 
times, Mr. Wilson Croker fifty-seven times. Sir C. Wcth- 
erell fifty-eight times. At last, however, on August 2, 
the disfranchising clauses were finally disposed of, and 
the house then went on to consider the third clause, 
which gave two members each to large towns previously 
unrepresented. A night was spent in resisting the claim 
of Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds to have repre- 
sentatives in the House of Commons. Meanwhile, 
meetings were being held in London and throughout the 
countiy, urging on the Government not to give way, to 

F 



66 The Progress of the St7'uggle. 

fight against the obstruction to the very last, and to keep 
Parhament sitting as long as might be necessary for the 
purpose of carrying the Bill. An important meeting of 
the supporters of the Government was held at the Foreign 
Office, over which Lord Althorp himself presided, and at 
that meeting he declared that "the enemies of reform 
are miserably mistaken if they hope to defeat the Bill by 
delay." " Rather than abandon the Bill," he declared, 
"Parliament will be kept sitting till next December, or 
next December twelve months if necessary." 

August 1 8 was a somewhat memorable day. The 
Marquis of Chandos moved an amendment on the i6tla 
clause, with the object of giving a vote to any farmer 
occupying on his own account land at the rent of not less 
than 50/. per annum, without any reference to the condi- 
tion of his tenure. Lord Althorp opposed the amend-- 
ment, on the ground that tenants at will, upon whom 
Lord Chandos proposed to confer the franchise, were 
for the most part completely dependent upon their 
landlords. A considerable number, however, of the re- 
formers themselves took a different view, and supported 
the amendment on the ground that to enlarge as much 
as possible the principle of enfranchisement was the ob- 
ject they had mainly at heart. The amendment was 
carried by a majority of eighty-one. The Bill passed 
through committee on September 7. The report was 
taken on Tuesday, 13th, and its consideration occupied 
several evenings. On September 19 the Bill was read a 
third time. One hundred and thirteen voted for the 
third reading, and fifty-eight against. The majority was 
fifty-five. The numbers on both sides were small, be- 
cause the House did not expect a division so soon. The 
anti-reformers took it for granted that there would be a 
long debate, but as it happened very few of them were 



1 83 1 The Bill and the Lords ^ 67 

in their seats when the third reading was proposed. 
Every captain of the Opposition apparently expected 
that somebody else would be ready to begin the discus- 
sion. Only one chief of their band, Sir J, Scarlett, hap- 
pened to be in his place, and he endeavoured to talk 
against time, but was frightened out of his design by the 
vehement shouts of " divide." He gave way at last, and 
the division was taken, to the surprise of crowds of Tories 
who came rushing up to prolong the discussion, and ar- 
rived only in time to find themselves too late. 

The motion that "the Bill do now pass," gave them, 
however, an opportunity for a discussion of three even- 
ings more. At five o'clock on the morning of September 
22, the last division took place. Three hundred and 
forty-five members voted for the passing of the Bill, 239 
against it, showing a majority of 106 on the side of the 
Government. The Bill, however, had still to go before 
the House of Lords. It was brought up on the evening 
of the 22nd to that House. Lord Grey moved its first 
reading. No discussion took place, and on October 3, 
Lord Grey moved that the Bill be read a second time. 
His speech appears on the testimony of all contempora- 
ries to have been fully worthy of the great occasion. It 
was closely argumentative in substance, stately and elo- 
quent in style. Especially impressive was the con- 
cluding portion, in which he appealed to the archbishops 
and bishops in the House not to assist a narrow majority 
in rejecting the Bill. He appealed to them to remember 
that if their influence should enable the opponents of 
reform to throw out the Government proposition, the 
prelates would then stand before the people of England 
as the enemies of a moderate and just scheme of reform. 
Lord Wharncliffe moved that the Bill be read a second 
time that day six months. The Duke of Wellington and 



68 The Progress of the Struggle. 

Lord Lyndhurst opposed the Bill ; Lord Brougham sup- 
ported it, with characteristic energy and power. The 
division took place on the morning of October 8, and 
there was found to be a majority of forty -one against the 
second reading. The whole work of a session in the 
Commons had been done in vain. The Lords interposed 
at the last moment, and there was an end of reform for 
that year. 

Some, at least, of the peers must have felt the respon- 
sibility of the situation very deeply, and must have 
found their hearts sink within them as they left the 
House of Lords on the dawn of that morning in autumn, 
and were able to say to themselves that they had inter- 
posed between the English people and a moderate and 
yet popular scheme of reform. Passionate emotion 
spread over the country when the news went abroad. 
Tumultuous meetings were held everywhere. In many 
towns the shops were closed, and m^ourning bells tolled 
from the churches. " Run for gold," became the popu- 
lar cry, and a run was really made upon the Bank of 
England which at one time caused great alarm. Vast 
crowds assembled along the street from Whitehall to the 
Houses of Parliament, cheering the reform leaders, and 
denouncing with furious execrations the members of 
either House who had opposed the Bill. The Duke of 
Newcastle, the Marquis of Londonderry, and several 
other peers were attacked by mobs, and were saved not 
without some struggle and some danger. The bishops 
were the objects of special detestation, and a cry arose 
everywhere for their expulsion from the Upper Chamber. 
Indeed, proposals for the abolition of the House of Lords 
became popular almost everywhere over the country. 
Riots took place at Derby and at Nottingham. Notting- 
ham Castle, the seat of the Duke of Newcastle, who had 



1 83 1 The Reform Riots. 69 

made himself specially odious as an opponent of the 
Reform Bill, was burnt to the ground. One of the 
innocent victims of the time was Mrs. Musters, once 
celebrated as Mary Chaworth, Lord Byron's first love, 
about whom he had written his poem " The Dream." 
The house of Mr. Musters was set on fire. The fire was 
not allowed to spread, and indeed was put out without 
much trouble, but Mrs. Musters in alarm fled from the 
house, and took refuge in a garden. Terror and the 
chill air brought on a fit of illness, which ended shortly 
after in her death. Belvoir Castle, the seat of the Duke 
of Rutland, was attacked by a mob. Bristol saw a series 
of riots, the like of which had hardly ever been witnessed 
in this country before. Sir Charles Wetherell, one of 
the most notorious opponents of the Reform Bill, was 
Recorder of Bristol, and came down to hold an assize 
court there. When he entered the city, the carriage 
in which he sat was escorted by a large number of 
special constables, but it was attacked by a crowd. 
Stones were thrown, several of the attendants were 
severely injured, and it was with no little difficulty that 
Sir Charles was enabled to make his way into the hall 
where the court was to be held. A series of riots began. 
The rioters for a time gained the upper hand, and Sir 
Charles Wetherell had to escape from the Mansion 
House in disguise ; had to climb over the roofs of the 
houses near, and had to be smuggled out of the city as 
quickly as possible. The troops were at last called out, 
the officers and men behaved with great forbearance and 
discretion, and the riot was at last suppressed, but not 
before the Mansion House, the Bridewell, and some 
other public buildings had been thoroughly destroyed. 
In almost every cathedral town there was what might be 
called a special disturbance. The unpopularity of the 



70 The Progress of the Struggle. 1831 

bishops was broad and deep, and many of the fiercer 
spirits in every mob took the opportunity to urge an 
attack upon cathedrals and churches. Even the reform 
Government themselves came in for a certain share of 
the fury against anti-reformers. Some wild suspicion 
got about that there were divisions in the Cabinet as to 
the expediency of pressing the Reform Bill, and it was 
feared that Lord Grey might be induced to put off the 
reintroduction of the measure to some indefinite time. 
Lord Grey felt a little hurt at these suspicions, and on 
one or two occasions rebuked a public deputation with 
something like asperity. The whole condition of things 
was such that a very slight act of indiscretion, or even a 
very slight excess of zeal at an inopportune moment, 
among the leaders on one side or the other, might have 
led to something like a distinctly revolutionary move- 
ment. 

How near England came at this time to the verge of 
actual revolution, will probably be never known with 
certainty. It is easy now, as we look back from a safe 
distance, to underrate the extent of the danger. We have 
grown so accustomed to stability in our political affairs, 
that it seems hard to believe in the imminence of revolu- 
tion at a time so near to our own. Yet it is hardly pos- 
sible to doubt that during the reform struggle, England 
was brought once or twice very close to revolution, and 
that the great leaders of the liberal party of the day were 
aware of the danger, and were making preparations 
against it. Some of the Liberal leaders must have begun 
to be afraid lest the King should ultimately resist the 
pressure of the Ministry and of the public. They must 
have asked themselves what course it would be their duty 
to take in such an emergency. If the King persisted in 
opposing the operation of constitutional principles, it 



1 83 1 Possible Revolution. 71 

would be practically to attempt a revolution. Were the 
ijreat Liberal nobles of England to side with the Kino- 
against the Parliament and the people, or to endeavour 
to take such action on behalf of the Parliament and the 
people as might anticipate the unconstitutional action 
of the Crown ? The dilemma appeared not unlike that 
which was presented when Charles I. broke away from 
his Parliament. Some at least of the influential English 
nobles seem to have been inclined to cast in their lot 
with the Parliament and against the Sovereign in the 
event of the Sovereign proving faithless to the constitu- 
tional principles by virtue of which alone he held his 
crown. Many years afterwards it came out that there 
was a tentative sort of correspondence going on under 
the sanction, or at least with the connivance, of some of 
the Liberal leaders, the object of which was to make 
arrangements for the disposition of the army in the event 
of the King's unconstitutional action rendering a struggle 
inevitable. During the trial of the Irish state prisoners 
at Clonmel in 1848 evidence was called to prove the 
existence of a correspondence which undoubtedly showed 
that some influential reformers were prepared, should 
the necessity be forced upon them, to side with the 
Parliament and the people against the King, and that 
they were trying to secure in advance the co-operation 
of the great soldier. Sir Charles Napier. Meanwhile 
popular excitement everywhere was growing to the wild- 
est pitch. O'Connell, the Irish leader, threw all the aid 
of his eloquence and his energy into the cause of English 
Reform. He once addressed a great meeting at Charing 
Cross, and pointing with his outstretched right hand in 
the direction of Whitehall Palace, he reminded his 
audience that there a King had lost his head. Why, 
O'Connell asked, had this doom come on him ? The 



72 The Progress of tha Sti'ltgglc. 1S31 

orator supplied the answer himself. "It was," said 
O'Connell, "because he obeyed the dictation of a foreign 
wife." The allusion to the supposed influence of the 
Oucen over King William was • taken up by the crowd 
with instant appreciation, and was cheered with a ve- 
hemence which gave new emphasis to its political 
meaning. 

Parliament reassembled on December 6, 1831. The 
King in person opened the session. His speech an- 
nounced that measures for the reform of the Commons 
would be introduced, and added that " the speedy and 
satisfactory settlement of this question becomes daily of 
more pressing importance to the security of the State and 
the contentment and the welfare of the people." On 
Monday, December 12, Lord John Russell rose in the 
House of Commons to ask leave to bring in his third 
Reform Bill. There were no very important differences 
between the new Bill and the former measures. Some 
slight changes, of little account to us at this distance of 
time, were introduced, and these on the whole were rather 
of a nature to moderate than to strengthen the character 
of the Bill. The Opposition struggled hard to have the 
second reading delayed, and made it a reproach to 
Ministers that whatever changes they had introduced 
into their measures had been borrowed from the Con- 
servative side of the House. The second reading of the 
Bill was taken on December 18, a Sunday morning. 
There were 324 votes for the second reading, 162 against 
it; a majority of exactly 2 to i. Parliament adjourned 
for the Christmas holidays. Much of the early part of 
the New Year was occupied in trying the rioters who had 
made disturbances throughout the country. They were 
severely dealt with in some cases. Four m^en were 
executed at Bristol, three at Nottingham. Parliament 



I S3 2 The Waverers. 73 

reassembled on January 17, 1832 ; on the 20th the House 
went into committee on the Reform Bill. The tactics of 
obstruction came promptly into play again. From 
January 20 to March 14, was occupied in this sort of 
opposition. The Bill got out of committee then, and 
passed its third reading on IMarch 23, by a majority of 
116. It was introduced into the House of Lords at once, 
and its second reading fixed for April 9. 

The great question now was whether the Lords would 
give way. A small group of peers, led by Lord Wharn- 
cliffe and Lord Harrowby, came into considerable promi- 
nence at this crisis. They were called " the Waverers," 
because their political action oscillated backwards and 
forwards between the Ministry and the Opposition. They 
really held the balance of power in the House of Lords. 
The course that they might decide upon at any moment 
would settle for the time the fate of the Reform Bill. 
Lord Wharncliffe went so far as to admit that some 
sort of reform measure must be introduced, but he voted 
against the second reading of the former Bill because he 
declared he had still a hope that something more moder- 
ate might be introduced. The key of the difficulty, 
however, was held in the hands of the King. If he would 
increly give his consent to a large creation of new peers, 
Lord Wharncliffe and his waverers would most certainly 
never put the Government to the trouble of carrying such 
a measure into effect. They would never run the risk of 
having their House flooded with reforming peers. But 
this was exactly what the King was unwilling to do. He 
hoped that the Waverers would assist him in his desire 
to get a very moderate, and from his point of view, a very 
harmless Reform Bill introduced. So long as there was 
any hope of thus tampering with the constitution, he was 
determined not to give way to the urgent demands of the 



74 The Progress of the Struggle. 

Ministry. He would not authorise them to threaten a 
new creation of peers. When the Bill was brought into 
the House of Lords on April 9, the Duke of Wellington 
announced that he was as determined as ever to offer 
it an uncompromising opposition. He was indiscreet 
enough in his speech to declare that he did not believe 
the King himself wished for any such reform as the Bill 
proposed. He said he was fully persuaded that it was a 
mistake to believe that the King had any interest in that 
Bill, and was satisfied that if the King's real feelings 
were made known to the country, Lord Grey would never 
be able to pass such a measure. The Waverers, however, 
supported the second reading of the Bill, and it was 
carried by a majority of nine. The policy of the Waverers 
seemed still to be carried out in the spirit and almost in the 
letter. They had helped the Minister to pass the second 
reading, but by a majority so small as almost to allow the 
Opposition to feel fully confident that they could so muti- 
late it in committee as to render it practically worthless. 
When the House went into committee. Lord Lyndhurst 
led the Opposition, and moved that the consideration of 
the disenfranchising clauses should be postponed until 
the enfranchising clause had first been considered, so 
that instead of making enfranchisement a consequence of 
disenfranchisement, disenfranchisement might follow en- 
franchisement. The Waverers declared that they would 
go with Lord Lyndhurst. It may seem that the question 
was of little importance, and only concerned the order 
in which the various clauses of the Bill were to be taken 
by the committee, but Lord Grey now, as on a former 
occasion, promptly declared that the real question for 
him was whether the control of the measure was to be 
left in the hands of its friends and its promoters, or 
whether it was to pass into the power and guidance of 
those who were always its bitter and deadly enemies. 



1832 Lord Grey' s Resignation. 75 

He declared that if Lord Lyndhurst's motion were car- 
ried, he would regard it as fatal to the Bill. Lord Lynd- 
hurst persevered, and his motion was carried by a ma- 
jority of thirty-five. Lord Grey at once moved the ad- 
journment of the debate and the further consideration of 
the Bill until May 10. It was now clear that Lord Grey 
was determined to carry the measure by the assistance 
of the King, or to resign his office. The King at first 
refused to give his consent to the creation of a sufficient 
number of peers to insure the passing of the measure. 
Lord Grey tendered his resignation, and the resignation 
was accepted. 

The wild commotion that spread all over the country 
alarmed for a while even the stoutest opponents of re- 
form. The Duke of Wellington himself may have felt 
his heart sink within him. Utter coinmotion prevailed 
in the palace. The King sent for Lord Lyndhurst and 
begged for his advice. Lord Lyndhurst recommended 
that the Duke of Wellington should be sent for. The 
King endeavoured to prevail on the Duke to take the 
leadership of a new administration. The Duke did not 
sec his way, and recommended that Peel should be in- 
vited to form a Government. Peel knew well that he 
could not maintain a Ministry, and he naturally and pro- 
perly declined. The Duke of Wellington was once more 
urged, and, out of sheer loyalty and devotion to his 
Sovereign, he actually made the vain attempt to get to- 
gether an anti-reform administration. It was only an 
attempt. It came to nothing. Before the game was 
fairly started it had to be given up. Nothing was left 
but for the King to recall Lord Grey to power and con- 
sent to the measures necessary for the passing of the 
Reform Bill. Meantime the perplexed King was openly 
denounced all over the country. When his carriage was 



76 The Progress of the Struggle. 

seen in London it was surrounded by hooting and shriek- 
ing crowds. The guards had to take the utmost care 
lest some personal attack should be made on him. Lord 
Grey and Lord Brougham insisted, as a condition of their 
returning to office, that the King should give his consent 
to the creation of a sufficient number of new peers. The 
King yielded at last and yielded in dissatisfied and angry 
mood, a mood which was intensified when Lord 
Brougham requested that the consent should be put into 
writing. At last William gave way, and handed a piece 
of paper to Lord Brougham, containing the statement 
that " the King grants permission to Earl Grey and to 
his Chancellor, Lord Brougham, to create such a num- 
ber of peers as will be sufficient to insure the passing of 
the Reform Bill." When that consent had been given 
there was an end to the opposition. The Duke of Well- 
ington withdrew, not only from any part in the debates 
on the Bill, but even from the House of Lords altogether 
until after the Bill had been passed. The Waverers of 
course gave way. It would be no further use to oppose 
the Bill. Lord \\Tiarncliffe spoke bitterly against it be- 
cause he evidently thought he had been outwitted, if not 
actually deceived, by the Ministry, but there was no fur- 
ther substantial opposition to the measure. The Bill 
passed through the Lords on June 4, and the Royal as- 
sent was given to the measure a few days later. 

The House of Lords, in yielding without further 
struggle, settled a principle without which our constitu- 
tional system could now hardly continue to work. They 
settled the principle that the House of Lords were never 
to carry resistance to any measure coming from the 
Commons beyond a certain point — ^beyond the time when 
it became unmistakably evident that the Commons were 
in earnest. Since that day no serious attempt has been 



1832 The End cf Personal Sovereignty. 7 7 

made by the House of Lords to carry resistance to the 
popular will any further than just such a period as will 
allow the House of Commons to reconsider their former 
decision. When the House of Commons have recon- 
sidered their decision and still adhere to it, it is now 
almost as clearly settled as any other principle in our 
constitutional system that the House of Lords are then 
to give way and withdraw all further opposition. It may 
be stated in plain words, that were the House of Lords 
now to depart from this implied arrangement, some 
modification of our constitutional system, as regards the 
Upper Chamber, would be inevitable. Another question 
settled we may hope for ever by the pressure brought to 
bear upon King William, was that which concerns the 
influence of the Sovereign's own personal will in legisla- 
tion. The King gave way to the advice of his Ministers 
on a matter of vital importance to the nation, and on 
which his opinions were opposed to those of the majority. 
He yielded, not to mere argument or to mere persuasion, 
but to actual pressure. It became thereby settled that 
the personal will of the Sovereign was no longer to bo 
a decisive authority in our scheme of Government. That 
was, we believe, the last time when the question ever was 
tested. With the close of the reign of William IV. and 
the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne, ended that 
chapter of our history in which the personal will of the 
Sovereign made one of the conditions under which the 
country is to be governed. It is now satisfactorily, and 
we trust finally settled, that the Sovereign always yields 
to the advice of the Ministers. As in the case of the 
House of Lords so in the case of the Crov/n, it may be 
said that any departure from the well-established and 
well-recognized principle, could we suppose such a thing 
possible, M'ould now lca.d beyond doubt to some impor- 
tant..modification cf our whole constitutional r,ystem. 



78 The Progress of the Struggle, 1832 

Some alterations, as we have seen, were introduced 
into the reform scheme in the course of its long struggle 
through both Houses of Parliament. But its main fea- 
tures underwent no material change. To us, looking 
back on the Reform Bill from this distance of time, it 
seems that nothing could have been more moderate and 
even modest in its proposals. Not that the change 
effected by it was not great. It amounted in truth to 
something like a parliamentary revolution. But there 
were certain distinct objects necessary to be accom- 
plished if Parliament was to remain any longer in har- 
mony with the spirit of the country, and in a condition to 
deal with its political wants, and it is not easy to see 
how the change could have been effected in a more 
cautious and a more gradual way. What the Reform 
Bill actually did was to pass sentence on the system of 
close or nomination boroughs, to establish in practical 
working order the principle that the House of Commons 
was a representative assembly, bearing due proportion in 
its numbers and in its arrangement to the numbers and 
the interests of the constituents, and to extend the suf- 
frage so as to enfranchise the great bulk of the middle 
and lower middle classes of the community. The Re- 
form Act was indeed very far from bringing representa- 
tion and constituency into anything like exact proportion, 
but it made a distinct advance in that way, and it esta- 
blished a principle which is left to be wrought into a more 
perfect system by future generations. The Bill was only 
a compromise, but under all the circumstances it could 
hardly have been anything else. Lord Grey and his 
colleagues might have brought in a very modest measure 
of reform, some such scheme as other reformers were 
frequently bringing forward during the long dull interval 
when the question was not occupying the attention of 



1832 Disappointment with the Bill. 79 

any Government. Such a Bill, however, would have 
been almost as difficult to pass as that which they at last 
succeeded in carrying into law. On the other hand they 
might have endeavoured to satisfy the demands of the 
more Radical members of the House of Commons and of 
Radicals generally out of doors, and introduced a meas- 
ure at once bold and comprehensive which would have 
settled the question for many generations. But we doubt 
very much whether it would have been possible to carry 
such a Bill just then. Certainly it would have involved 
the risk of a most serious struggle, perhaps of something 
like a warfare of class against class. Lord Grey attempted 
no uprooting of ancient institutions, and he carried with 
him what may be called the common sense and common 
instincts of the great bulk of the English population, in 
proceeding strictly on what were since his time called 
the old lines of the constitution. But it is certain that 
the Bill disappointed a great many not only outside the 
House of Commons but within it, and we may add not 
only outside the Government but even in the Cabinet 
itself. Its one main defect, as will afterwards appear, 
was the manner in which it left the great body of the 
working classes entirely outside what was called the pale 
of the constitution. It redeemed the political power of 
the State from being the monopoly of one great class, 
and made it the partnership of two great classes. That 
was an advance in itself, and it established the principle 
which made further advance possible. But it disappointed 
those who found themselves not better off but even 
v/orse off as regards the franchise than they had been 
before. 

It is clear that the Bill was above all things one 
which it would have been wise on the part of the Con- 
servatives to accept with as little 'resistance as possible. 



8o The Progress of the Struggle. 

It Y/as the most moderate measure of reform which it was 
possible for any really reforming government to offer, or 
which would have been accepted by the people at large. 
It ought, one would think, to have been clear even then 
to an intelligent Conservative, that the country would 
never again be content to listen to any smaller project 
of reform. Yet the Conservatives had not the slightest 
idea of accepting any compromise. On the contrary, 
they had strong hopes that they would be able to resist 
the whole reform movement and beat it back. There 
were Tories who not only believed that the Government 
would never be able to carry any Reform Bill, but were 
even satisfied that the leaders of the Government did not 
expect to succeed. Sir James Graham was spoken to by 
a member in the lobby on the night after the first Re- 
form Bill had been explained. The member who ad- 
dressed him complimented him and his colleagues on 
their courage and honesty, but added that he supposed 
of course they were perfectly prepared to go out of office 
the next day. 

In the course of one of the closing debates on the 
Reform Bill in the House of Commons, Lord John 
Russell made use of certain words which were often 
afterwards cited against him. They were quoted by ex- 
treme reformers to his reproach, and they were quoted 
by extreme opponents of reform as a Ministerial pledge 
against further change. Lord John Russell said, that in 
his opinion " so far as Ministers are concerned, this is a 
final measure. I declared on the second reading of the 
Reform Bill that if only a part of the measure were 
carried it would lead to new agitations, but that is now 
avoided by the state in which the Bill has come from the 
other House." It was instantly assumed by the extreme 
advocates of reform that Lord John Russell meant by 



1832 '' Finality y 81 

these words to express his opinion that the era of reform 
had closed in England, that enough had been done in 
the way of change for all time, that the political system 
of this country was then the good made perfects On the 
other hand, when many years after Lord John Russell 
undertook further schemes of reform, the extreme oppo- 
nents of change accused him of having broken a solemn 
pledge. The speech was constantly referred to as Lord 
John Russell's " finality " declaration, and indeed the 
noble Lord himself was irreverently dubbed by certain 
critics, " finality Jack." The meaning, however, of Lord 
John Russell's statement is perfectly obvious, nor was 
there anything in it inconsistent with his taking up fur- 
ther schemes of reform at a distant period. What he 
meant was that as regarded that particular chapter of re- 
form, Lord Grey's government felt that it had closed. 
They had done enough for the time. They knew very 
well that in English politics reforms are made in eras or 
in sections, and that the country will not stand the ma- 
king of fresh changes year after year. The habit of the 
English people is to lay in a stock of reform which they 
believe will last a certain time, and to have no more to do 
with the question until the time seems to have nearly run 
out. Any practical politician v/ould have seen that no 
matter how great might be the class grievances left unre- 
medied by the Reform Bill of 1832, it would be impossible 
to induce Parliament and the public to set about a new 
scheme of reform immediately after. Lord John Russell 
meant, therefore, as indeed he said in plain words, that 
the government of Lord Grey regarded themselves as 
having done their part in the settlement of reform, and 
that having accomplished so much they did not propose 
to attempt anything further. Lord John Russell it seems 
almost needless to say, continued to be as steady an ad- 

G 



82 The Progress of the Struggle. 

vocate of reform, after the passing of Lord Grey's Bill, as 
he had been before. He knew well that the Bill was but 
a beginning and a compromise, and that much more re- 
mained to be done even in his own time. He could not 
be supposed to shut his eyes to the fact that that artisan 
class, with whom he had always shown much sympathy, 
were not only still left out of the franchise, but were, in- 
deed, deprived of special franchises and political privi- 
leges which they had before the passing of the Bill. No 
one of Lord John Russell's political sagacity could have 
failed to see that the enfranchisement of the working class 
would become a "burning question " before many years 
should have gone over the heads of statesmen. 

With the passing of the Reform Bill, the name of 
Lord Grey may be said to pass out of history. He 
had done his own special and appointed work, and 
had done it patiently and well. It was a great effort on 
the part of a man of his aristocratic descent, and some- 
what, cold and haughty temperament, to interest himself 
so deeply and risk so much in a movement to extend the 
franchise to a class of men with whom he could have had 
but an imperfectly developed sympathy. His is not 
a great figure in history, but it is a dignified and stately 
figure. It represented a great movement, of which he 
was not indeed the source and the inspiration, but of 
which he was the successful guide and the graceful, im- 
posing figure-head. His life links together two distinct 
eras of our history, which but for that connecting bond 
would be completely sundered. Lord Grey began his 
political career as the friend and the associate of that 
great group of statesmen and orators of whom it is not 
too much to say that as a group they had not their rivals 
in the previous history of England, and that they have 
not found their rivals in the history of later days. We have 



1832 West Indian Slavery. Z^t 

had since that time, as we had before, many great names, 
names in themselves perhaps as great as any which were 
shining in the early part of Lord Grey's career. But 
there was not before his time, and there has not been 
since, any group of statesmen who could be compared 
with the two Pitts, with Burke, with Fox, with Sheridan, 
and with Windham. Amongst such men Lord Grey did 
not indeed hold a commanding place ; but he was ad- 
mitted into their company, he was looked upon as one of 
them, and some of their lustre is still allowed to shine 
over his more modest personal fame. 



CHAPTER VIL 

BLACK AND WHITE SLAVERY. 

The period which succeeded the passing of the Reform 
Bill was one of immense activity and earnestness in 
legislation. During the ten years of the Whig adminis- 
tration from 1 83 1 to 1 84 1 — for we may take it as a whole 
period, notwithstanding one or two small breaks already 
mentioned or still to be mentioned — there were more plans 
and projects of reform in all directions set on foot and 
carried through than in any previous period of English 
history or in any subsequent period, if we except the 
marvellous three or four years of Mr. Gladstone's first 
administration. The first great reform was the complete 
abolition of the system of slavery in the British colonies. 
The slave trade had itself been suppressed so far as we 
could suppress it long before that time, but now the 
whole system of West Indian slavery was brought to an 
end. Despite the most gloom^y prophecies on the part 
of lovers of the old system, despite the elaborate and ex- 
haustive arguments that free labour never could compete 



84 Black and WJiite Slavery. 

with slave labour, and that the actual ruin of our sugar- 
growing colonies must be the result of abolition, the 
Government, driven on by public opinion, persevered 
and put an end to slavery in our colonies. 

A long agitation of the small but energetic anti-slavery 
party brought about this practical result in 1833. In 
many parts of the colonial empire of Great Britain, espe- 
cially in the West India islands, England had succeeded 
to the inheritance of a slave system and of an immense 
number of negro slaves. Granville Sharpe, Zachary 
Macaulay, father of the historian and statesman, Thomas 
Fowell Buxton, Wilberforce, Brougham, and many 
others had for a long time been stiriving hard to rouse 
up public opinion to the abolition of the slave system. 
The slave owners were strongly represented in Parlia- 
ment. The idea that it was incumbent on any nation 
to abolish a slave system which they found in existence 
was something new to the public in general. The slave 
trade had already been abolished, not without many 
struggles and much difficulty, but the slave trade seemed 
to most persons to involve entirely different moral and 
economical principles from those which attached to the 
system of domestic slavery. To many intelligent and 
conscientious men it seemed quite reasonable to say that 
England should not allow a trade to go on in the forcible 
abduction and importation of unfortunate negroes from 
their homes in Africa, but they did not see that anything 
like a moral obligation rested upon England to abolish 
at a stroke a system of domestic slavery which had 
grown up in her colonies independent of any action of 
her own, which she found existing there, which had 
come down from almost all time, and which many or 
most of them believed to be not only necessary for the 
development of colonial interests, but for the advantage 



1832 The Abolitionists. 85 

and protection of the slaves themselves. Some three- 
quarters of a million of slaves would have to be convert- 
ed into free labourers in order to satisfy the appeal which 
Granville Sharpe and Wilberforce were making. 

Fowell Buxton was in Parliament. Zachary Macaulay 
had resigned the management of a West Indian estate 
because of his detestation of the slave system, and had 
taken a leading part in promoting an attempt to found a 
new negro colony at Sierra Leone, an attempt which 
ended in failure. He was a man who thoroughly under- 
stood the condition of the slave colonies, and he was able 
to furnish Buxton with a mass of hard facts which were 
of immense influence in arousing public opinion in Eng- 
land. The most terrible disclosures were made as to the 
brutal treatment of the negroes. For a long time the 
slave owners had met every argument for emancipation 
by insisting that it would necessarily be followed by a 
negro insurrection, that the colonies would be exposed to 
the most terrible danger, and above all, that the slaves 
were treated with consideration and affection, such as 
free labourers hardly ever received in England itself. 
All the stories vaguely floating in England about the flog- 
ging of negro men and women, the branding and muti- 
lations, were treated as absurd fables and were described 
as such with the overbearing authority of the men who 
have been there, and ought to know. The facts which 
Zachary Macaulay assisted Buxton to collect put a stop 
to this comfortable way of dealing with the question. It 
was shown that the most horrible and wholesale system 
of flogging and branding prevailed throughout the West 
Indies. The names, the facts, the places, the dates, 
were given. Women actually with child had been 
scourged with as many as a hundred and seventy lashes. 
Women had been stripped, tied up to a post, and left 



S6 Black and White Slavery. 1823-33 

there naked through a whole day, writhing under a tropi- 
cal sun and with a flogging inflicted at stated intervals. 
Half-caste women, almost as white as English women, 
were frequently to be identified by the brand on their 
breasts. The newspapers of the islands constantly con- 
tained advertisements for runaway slaves. Nearly all of 
these were to be identified by the brandings or the marks 
of flogging. It was occasionally emphasised as a means 
of identifying a particular woman that she was branded 
on both breasts. So long before as May 1823, Buxton 
brought on his first motion for the abolition of slavery. 
The resolution declared the slavery system repugnant to 
the principles of the British Constitution and of the Chris- 
tian religion, and declared that it ought to be gradually 
abolished throughout the British colonies, with such ex- 
pedition as may be found consistent with a due regard 
for the well-being of the parties concerned. Canning 
was then the leading member of the House of Commons. 
He did not go so far as to support Buxton, but he proposed 
three resolutions affirming the expediency of improving 
the condition of the slaves, preparing them for civil free- 
dom, and at the same time pledging the House to take 
care that all this should be compatible with the well-being 
of the slaves, the safety of the colonies, and a full consid- 
eration for the rights of private property. These resolu- 
tions were adopted, and the colonists urged to take at 
least one step towards complying with their spirit by abol- 
ishing the flogging of women. 

The colonies, of course, were under different systems 
of government. Some were under the direct authority 
of the Colonial Office, others were governed by local 
legislatures. Jamaica was one of these, and its House 
of Assembly was furious with anger at the idea of the 
British legislature attempting to interfere in the affairs 



1823-33 ^^^ Demerara Court- Martial. 87 

of the colony. In Jamaica there were nearly a half a 
million of negroes, Barbadoes and Demerara, the latter 
a crown colony, governed directly by the Colonial Office, 
broke into still greater fury of wrath. In Demerara 
some of the slaves had heard vague rumours from Eng- 
land that the day of their freedom was coming, and in 
a part of the colony they refused to work. Their re- 
fusal was called an insurrection, and the insurrection 
was stamped out with the most savage cruelty. An Eng- 
lish missionary, the Rev. John Smith, a dissenter, was 
charged with inciting the slaves to revolt. He was im-. 
prisoned ; he was treated with barbarous severity ; he 
was tried with utter disregard of most of the forms of 
justice, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He es- 
caped the scaffold, however. He died in consequence of 
the ill-treatment he had suffered, while some of his 
prosecutors, less cruel than others, were pleading that 
the recommendation to mercy with which the court-mar- 
tial had accompanied its verdict ought to be made a 
reality. The whole question was taken up in England. 
Brougham, Mackintosh, and Lushington denounced the 
proceedings of the court-martial. The Ministers reversed 
the proceedings of the court, and even when they had 
made this necessary concession to justice and decency, 
Brougham's motion, denouncing the whole transaction, 
was defeated by 193 to 146. The Colonial Office at once 
issued new regulations for the treatment of slaves in 
the Crown colonies. These regulations prevented the 
driver from carrying a whip in the field, abolished alto- 
gether the flogging of women, ordered that no punish- 
ment should be inflicted until twenty-four hours at least 
after the offence, that no slave should receive more than 
twenty-five lashes in one day, and that married slaves 
were not to be separated from their children. This was 



88 Black and White Slavery. 1823-33 

undoubtedly an improvement so far as the Crown colonies 
were concerned, but it was not easy to get the local au- 
thories of Jamaica to legislate. In 1826 they did indeed 
pass what professed to be an Act to amend the slave 
laws, but the Act had nothing really valuable in it. It 
allowed the use of a whip in the field, and it did not 
abolish or interfere in any way with the flogging of 
women. The Colonial Office declined to sanction the Act. 
The Jamaica Assembly would not assent to the views of 
the Colonial Office, and thus the supposed reform dropped 
through altogether. In May 1830, a great meeting was 
held in London to agitate again for the total abolition of 
slavery, Wilberforce, who had long been out of public 
life owing to illness, presiding, and Mr. Buxton proposed 
a resolution calling on the country to agitate for the en- 
tire abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions. 
One of the results of this meeting was that Lord 
Brougham raised the whole question in the House of 
Commons. He brought forward a motion in the close of 
the session of 1830, on the general subject of slavery. He 
narrated some of the most appalling stories of the abuse 
of despotic power in the colonies. He thrilled the House 
by his eloquence and his passion. His motion was 
defeated, as the motion of an independent member in 
such a case is almost sure to be, but the course he had 
taken succeeded in arousing the attention of the country, 
and making the question of abolition one which no 
Government could long afford to neglect. Mr. Buxton 
drew attention to the subject the following year. Lord 
Althorp, unable to accept Buxton's propositions, offered 
a poor sort of compromise, the effect of which was that 
the colonies which really improved the condition of their 
slaves should be allowed to import their sugar into this 
country at reduced rates of duty. This absurd and 



1833 Lord Stanley on Slavery. 89 

feeble suggestion to bribe the planters into a little 
moderation towards their slaves would have been un- 
worthy of serious consideration, even if the whole ques- 
tion had merely refen-ed to the physical treatment of 
the unfortunate serfs. But the question, in the mind of 
Buxton, and now of the country in general, was whether 
slavery should exist at all, whether it should be abol- 
ished unconditionally, or whether, at least, some steps 
should be taken to insure its gradual extinction. Par- 
liament, however, was dissolved almost immediately 
after, in consequence of the Reform Bill, and the newly- 
elected House of Commons was for some time occupied 
with other subjects. When Parliament met in 1833, 
everyone expected that the speech from the throne 
would contain some allusion to the question of emanci- 
pation. No word, however, in the speech, long though 
it was, had any reference to the subject of slavery. ' Bux- 
ton, therefore, at once gave notice of a motion on the 
question, and appealed to the Government to say whether 
they did not really intend to introduce a measure them- 
selves. The Government asked for some time to con- 
sider the course they could take. In the meantime. 
Lord Goderich, Secretary of the Colonies, had been 
transferred to the office of Lord Privy Seal, and the 
department of the Colonies was placed in charge of Lord 
Stanley. Lord Stanley was just the man to undertake a 
bold and hazardous task. He set to work to study the 
whole question of colonial slavery, and in a few weeks 
after his acceptance of office, he was enabled to state the 
policy of the Government on that subject. The speech 
has been described by all who heard it as a masterpiece 
of eloquence. The subject was one which exactly har- 
monised with his impetuous and generous nature. When 
Lord Stanley's feelings were really roused in some great 



go Black and White Slavery. 

cause, he was always able to rise to the height of a 
genuine eloquence. He was not a man of lofty intellect, 
or even, perhaps, of deeply-penetrating intelligence, but 
his style, when animated by feeling, carried with it all 
the persuasiveness and all the force which are especially 
adapted to move an assembly like the English Parlia- 
ment. Lord Stanley proposed a plan, the effect of which 
was that slavery proper should cease at once, but that in 
order to prepare the slave for the freedom he was ulti- 
mately to have, and to meet the chance of the eman- 
cipated negroes plunging into excesses of any kind, there 
should be a transition period — a time of apprenticeship 
before the negro became a thorough free man. The 
Colonial Secretary moved five resolutions, one declaring 
the opinion of the House "that immediate and effectual 
measures be taken for the entire abolition of slavery 
throughout the colonies, under such provisions for regu- 
lating the condition of the negroes as may combine 
their welfare with the interests of the proprietors." The 
second declared it expedient that all children born after 
the passing of an Act of Parliament for this purpose, or 
who should be under the age of six years at that time, 
should be declared free ; " subject, nevertheless, to such 
temporary restrictions as may be deemed necessary for 
their support and maintenance." The third declared 
all persons now slaves entitled to be registered as appren- 
ticed labourers, and to acquire thereby all the rights and 
privileges of free men, " subject to the restriction of 
labouring under conditions and for a time to be fixed by 
Parliament for their present owners." The fourth resolu- 
tion enabled the Government to advance by way of a 
loan, to be raised from time to time, a sum not exceeding 
15,000,000/., to provide against the risk of loss which 
proprietors of slaves m^ight sustain by the abolition of 



1833 Macaulay and Emancipation, 91 

slavery. The fifth merely authorised the Crown to meet 
the expense necessary for establishing a staff of stipen- 
diary magistrates in the colonies, and giving the local 
magistrates means to provide for the religious and moral 
education of the emancipated slaves. 

The first and second resolutions were adopted after 
some discussion, but the third resolution, which contained 
the principles of the apprenticeship system, gave rise to a 
strong opposition. Mr. Buxton himself led the Opposi- 
tion, and was followed by the professed friends of eman- 
cipation. Lord Howick, son of Earl Grey, also opposed 
this part of the scheme. He contended that the proposed 
interval of apprenticeship would in no way improve the 
character of the negroes, or render them more fit for the 
enjoyment of perfect liberty at the expiration of twelve 
years. He had given evidence of his sincerity on the 
subject by the fact that he resigned the office of Under- 
Secretary for the Colonies on account of the objection 
he felt to this part of the Ministerial scheme. Among 
those who supported the Government was Mr. T. B. 
Macaulay, afterwards famous as the historian, essayist, 
and orator. Mr. Macaulay spoke with all the more 
influence because he was the son of that Zachary 
Macaulay who had done more than almost any other 
man for the cause of emancipation, at a period when that 
cause was yet only beginning its struggles, and seemed 
to have little chance indeed of approaching success. 
Macaulay and others contended that the transition from 
slavery to a state of apprenticeship was, at all events, a 
great step in advance, that it settled the question of 
slavery, and that the delay of a few years was a matter 
of little consequence, as long as absolute emancipation 
was to follow in its course. Mr. Buxton was prevailed 
upon to withdraw his amendment and substitute another, 



g2 Black and White Slavery. ^^33 

to the effect that the labour of the emancipated slaves in 

the apprenticeship period should be for wages. Further 
pressure induced him to withdraw this amendment too, 
but Mr. O'Connell, who had seconded him and who was 
an uncompromising opponent of slavery in every form, 
would not give way, pressed the amendment to a division 
and carried forty votes with him against 324. The reso- 
lution which proposed the loan of 15,000,000/. to the 
planters was fiercely opposed by that party in Parliament 
which represented their interests, and took up their 
cause. The Government were most unwilling to be 
defeated in so great a public question, because of a mere 
difficulty about a sum of money. They therefore agreed 
to change the proposed loan of 15,000,000/. into an 
absolute gift of 20,000,000/. There might have been a 
good deal said against the policy of an absolute gift. 
There was certainly enough of what might be called 
superfluous and unnecessary injustice perpetrated or 
allowed by the planters as a body, to warrant any 
Government in refusing absolutely to buy them out of 
their odious privileges. The Government, however, 
acted wisely in not haggling about terms, and the country 
was willing to fling almost any amount of money away in 
order to get rid of so detestable a system. The resolu- 
tion, therefore, was carried without a division. It passed 
the House of Lords along with the rest. A Bill based 
on all the resolutions was promptly brought in and easily 
co.rried with a single change, reducing the term of 
apprenticeship from twelve years to seven in one class 
and seven to five in another. Thus the slaves were 
made free, and the planters were bought out of their 
privileges. Many of them found themselves positively 
enriched by the sum of money which fell to their share. 
They had as a body no part of the credit of the emanci- 



^^33 -^^^^ Factory Commission. 93 

pation. They had not even such perverted honour as 
might fall to the lot of the planters of the Southern 
States of America, who, believing themselves justified in 
maintaining their privileges, held both to the last, and 
preferred war ; for the men of the Southern States could 
only be forced to yield by superior strength, and were not 
to be bought or bribed out of their ill-omened claims. 
The Liverpool merchants were deeply concerned in the 
slave trade. Cooke, the famous actor, was once hissed 
in a Liverpool theatre for some offence he had committed. 
He came forward as if to apologise, and, amid the silence 
of an expectant audience, hissed out the words: "There 
is not a stone in the walls of Liverpool but is cemented 
by the blood of Africans." The saying was a little rude 
and out of place just then, but it was metaphorically if 
not literally true. 

Another reform of no small importance was accom- 
plished when the charter of the East India Company 
came to be renewed in 1833. The clause giving them a 
commercial monoply of the trade of the East was 
abolished, and the trade thrown open to the merchants 
of the world. 

There were other slaves in those days as well as the 
negro. There were slaves at home, slaves to all intents 
and purposes, who were condemned to a servitude as 
rigorous as that of the negro, and who, as far as personal 
treatment went, suffered more severely than negroes in 
the better class plantations. We speak now of the 
workers in the great mines and factories. No law up to 
this time regulated with anything like reasonable strin- 
gency the hours of labour in factories. Not merely men, 
but women and children were forced to work for a num- 
ber of hours absolutely inconsistent with physical health. 
A commission was appointed to investigate the condition 



94 Black and WJiite Slavery. 

of those who worked in the factories. Lord Ashley, since 
everywhere known as the Earl of Shaftesbury, was then 
at the opening of his long career of practical benevolence. 
Lord Ashley brought forward the motion which ended in 
the appointment of the commission. The commission 
quickly brought together an immense amount of evidence 
to show the terrible effect, moral and physical, of the 
overworking of women and children, and an agitation set 
in for the purpose of limiting by law the duration of the 
hours of labour. This raised a most important econo- 
mical question. Many men of undoubted humanity and 
good feeling towards the working classes were strongly 
opposed to the idea, and maintained not only that it was 
an improper interference with the operations of private 
industry on the part of the Government, but that it would 
end in, great injury to the workers themselves. Lord 
Ashley, however, won the day. The principle of legisla- 
tive interference to protect children working in factories 
was estabhshed by an Act passed in 1833, limiting the 
work of children to eight hours a day, and that of young 
persons under eighteen to sixty-nine hours a week. The 
agitation then set on foot and led by Lord Ashley was 
engaged for years after in endeavouring to give that 
principle a more extended application. A kind of side 
controversy began between the representatives of the 
landowning interest and the representatives of the manu- 
facturing interest. Many of the latter earnestly opposed 
the whole plan of legislation. Its result, they contended, 
must necessarily be to interfere injuriously with the trade 
of the country, and thereby to deprive the men of the 
employment on which they and their families had to live. 
It would be impossible, they contended, to apply any 
general rule to all the various branches of manufacturing 
industry. It would be impossible to fmd any one law 



t833 ^^^^ Factory Act. 95 

which could work with equal effect on different sorts of 
business requiring different hours ; on business which 
comes with a rush at one period of the year and is almost 
slack at another ; on business in which much depends 
on the assisting labour of women and children, and other 
occupations in which the women and children might be 
restricted as to their labour without any cessation of the 
operations of the establishment. Then, seeing that the 
reform was greatly pressed by benevolent landowners, 
the manufacturers retorted upon them and asked tliem 
what was the condition of their working labourers. The 
manufacturers insisted that the condition of children em- 
ployed in agricultural labour called far more loudly for 
the intervention of the State than that of the children at 
work in a Lancashire cotton mill. Moreover, the men 
employed in the mills, they insisted, were well looked 
after, were well paid, and were therefore very well able 
to take care not only of themselves but of their wives 
and children. On the other hand, the wretched la- 
bourer of Dorsetshire or Somersetshire never had more 
than was just enough to keep himself and his chil- 
dren from starvation, and at the end of his weary- 
career of drudgery the workhouse was his only refuge. 
Why then, they asked, not make laws for him, or if not 
for him, why not at least protect by legislation his 
wife and his children from the consequences of over- 
work ? 

The controversy was of some interest at the time, but 
it has little importance for us now. Parliament has long 
since established the principle that it is part of the right 
and the duty of the State to look after not merely the 
labour of children but also the conditions under which 
adult women are set to work. Parliament since that 
time has gone on advancing and advancing in the path 



g6 Black and IVJiite Slavery, 1S33 

of such legislation. It will no doubt some day or other 
undertake to do for the children working in the fields 
something like that which it has done for the women and 
children working in the factories. It is now admitted 
that the legislation for the factories has worked with 
almost entirely beneficent results. None of the evils 
anticipated from it have come to pass. Almost all the 
good it proposed to do has been realised. Each further 
step of extension in the same direction has been made 
with satisfactory results. 

Lord Ashley obtained at a later period a commission 
to inquire into the effects of the employment of women 
and girls in mines. It was found that in some of the 
coal mines women were employed as beasts of burden in 
the literal sense. The seams of coal were sometimes too 
narrow to allow them to stand upright, and they had 
therefore to crawl back and forwards on their hands and 
knees for fourteen or sixteen hours a day, drawing after 
them the trucks laden with coals. These trucks were 
usually made fast to a chain which passed between the 
legs of the women engaged in the work, and was then 
attached to a belt strapped round their waists. The 
women seldom wore any clothing but an old pair of 
trousers made of sacking. They were dressed like the 
men, and only differed from the men in the fact that 
they had to do the most laborious and degrading part of 
the work. The physical and moral injuries created by 
such a state of things need hardly be described. The 
mind must be dull indeed which has not imagination 
enough to conceive them. The agitation which Lord 
Ashley set on foot ended in the passing of an Act of 
Parliament prohibiting for ever the employment of wo- 
men or girls underground in the mines. Children were 
not allov/ed to be employed at all until they were at least 



1833 Paternal Legislation. 97 

ten years of age, and then their hours for work were 
limited. Government officials were intrusted with the 
supervision of the mines in order to see that the enact- 
ments were honestly and thoroughly carried out. 

It seems almost certain that for some time to come, 
at least, Parliament will go on enlarging the sphere of 
its experiments of 1833, in regulating the hours and con- 
ditions of labour for the working classes. A strong 
effort has been recently made to resist the claim of 
Government to interfere for the protection of the grown 
women employed in various branches of industry, and 
it has been made professedly in the interest and on 
behalf of the free rights of women. But it is only fair to 
observe that until Parliament makes up its mind to re- 
cognize women as citizens entitled to a vote, it is hardly 
reasonable to seek to withdraw from women the protec- 
tion which assuredly those have a right to claim who 
are not allowed to protect themselves. Those v/ho op- 
posed the principle of the factory legislation were, how- 
ever, in many instances, men of the purest and most 
unselfish motives, who sincerely believed that any at- 
tempt on the part of the Government or the legislature 
to interfere with the conditions of labour would end not 
in serving but in seriously injuring the veiy class Avhom 
it was especially proposed to benefit. The course of 
legislation on the subject of labour seems to have passed 
through three distinct stages For generations, and even 
for centuries, the only legislation which took notice of 
the condition of the labourer was legislation to coerce 
him, legislation to put him absolutely at the mercy of his 
employer. Then there came a short time during which 
it was maintained that the working of economic princi- 
ciples and of absolute freedom of contract would be 
enough to undo the evils that centuries of bad legislation 

H 



98 The Irish Tithe War 1832 

and ignorance of social and hygienic laws had engen- 
dered. " Leave things to themselves," was the dogma 
of that time, " and they will come right." To this period 
succeeded the third season, that of energetic desire to 
intervene in every possible way and direction for the 
regulation of labour in the interest of the working 
classes. This last period of activity has certainly not 
yet worked itself thoroughly out. The evils which gene- 
rations of a different sort of principle had created have 
not yet been wholly rooted out. When it has fully done 
its work, it too, we may be sure, will come to an end. 
At present, however, the balance has not yet been pro- 
perly adjusted, and legislation has still something to do 
in the interest of the working man before it can repair 
all the injury which it did in the days when it was only 
busy to coerce and oppress him. 



CHAPTER VIII.^ 

THE IRISH TITHE WAR. 

Irish tithes were one of the grievances which came 
under the energetic action of this period of reform. 
The people of Ireland complained with justice of having 
to pay tithes for the maintenance of the church esta- 
blishment in which they did not believe, and under 
whose roof they never bent in worship. Sydney Smith 
had well said of the Irish Church in his own peculiar 
fashion : " There is no abuse like it in all Europe, in all 
Asia, in all the discovered parts of Africa, and in all we 
have ever heard of Timbuctoo." " On an Irish Sabbath," 
he said, " the bell of a neat parish church often summons 
to church only the parson and an occasionally conform- 
ing clerk, while two hundred yards off a thousand 



1832 The Strike against Tithes. 99 

Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel and 
pelted by all the storms of heaven." To the collection 
of tithes, he declared, " in all probability about one 
milhon of lives may have been sacrificed in Ireland." A 
miserable, petty civil war was always smouldering ; many 
times the parson's dues had to be collected at the point 
of the bayonet and with the aid of musket shot. Riots 
took place. Men were killed on both sides. One of the 
most thrilling speeches ever made by O'Connell was that 
in which he describes a fearful scene that took place 
at a tithe riot, when a blind man was led near the 
scene of the struggle by a little girl, his daughter. A 
bullet from one of the police, passing across the field of 
fight, struck the harmless child and killed her, and the 
blind father found her blood flowing over his hands. It 
is stated that Charles Dickens was a reporter in the 
Gallery at the time when O'Connell made this speech. 
He was skilled in his craft to an extent which has rarely 
been equalled, but he threw down his pencil in the 
middle of the speech, and declared himself so much 
overpowered by the pathos of the description and of the 
orator's m.anner that he was unable to get on with his 
task. In the county of Kildare a very serious struggle 
arose, partly out of the tithe question pure and simple, 
and partly out of a broader religious controversy. There 
were two over-zealous curates of the Established Church 
in neighbouring parishes. One anxious to rebuild the 
parish church succeeded "by packing a vestry with 
Protestants," as Mr. Walpole puts it in his "History of 
England," in obtaining a rate for the purpose. The 
example was followed by the other clergyman. The 
parishioners, irritated by this, formed an association in 
which they determined never to pay tithe or church cess 
in voluntary cash payment again. The unpopularity of 



loo The Irish Tithe War. 1832 

the Protestant clergymen of that district greatly increased. 
An act done by one of them tended to embitter it. The 
Roman Catholic priest had been usually exempted in 
Ireland from the payment of the tithe, to which, no 
doubt, he as well as any other parishioner was legally 
liable. In one instance, however, a clergyman who was 
also a magistrate for the county and tithe proctor to the 
incumbent, an absentee, departed from the usual conve- 
nient principle, demanded tithes from the priest, and 
seized the priest's horse in default of payment. The 
parish priest of the place denounced from the pulpit the 
whole system and principle of tithes. Shortly after the 
cattle of two farmers were seized for tithes, and were 
released only on a promise that they should be brought up 
for sale in a fortnight. An impression got abroad among 
the tithe collectors that the cattle would not be brought 
up on the appointed day. The clergyman applied for 
assistance and a strong force of police was brought to 
the place. The principal town of the place was occu- 
pied by more than three hundred police, while dragoons 
and infantry were stationed at adjoining villages. The 
police were turned, for the time, into cattle drivers ; per- 
haps it should rather be said that they were turned for 
the time into a foraging party engaged in futile attempts 
to get cattle in order to drive them off. Wherever the 
police were supposed to be coming the cattle were locked 
up, and it was not legal to break open a lock in order to 
get at them. The efforts of the police were therefore, in 
most instances, reduced to nothing. In some few ex- 
ceptional cases where the police did succeed in capturing 
some of the cattle, no bidder could be found for them at 
the sale except the owner himself. They had therefore 
to be sold for a merely nominal price. A tithe collection 
which had to be conducted on this principle naturally 



1832 Organized Resistance. loi 

brought but little profit to the Church authorities. The 
same kind of dexterity and perseverance was shown in 
evading the collection of tithes which in later days has 
been shown in evading the levy of distress warrants for 
the collection of arrears of rent. It required the march- 
ing and counter marching of fatigue parties, reconnais- 
sajices, sorties, military expeditions of various kinds, and 
a regular army of police and soldiers to secure to a 
country clergyman the tithes which he claimed of a 
reluctant and hostile parish. 

The resistance, thus brought into organised shape, 
was not slow in spreading over parishes and counties. 
It was not then lawful to hold a public meeting in Ire- 
land, but no law prevented people from gathering toge- 
ther for an Irish sport called a hurling match. Great 
meetings were brought together in this way. There was 
an appointment for a hurling match. People came fre- 
quently armed, and made no scruple about admitting 
that their object was not to see who could send the ball 
farthest along the road, or across the fields, but who 
could lend the most efScient assistance in driving the 
tithe system out of the country. Intimidation was exer- 
cised by these crowds upon mild parishioners who were 
willing to pay the tithe which they detested for the sake 
of. living at quiet with their neighbours. They were 
taught to feel that if they could by this process concihate 
the Protestant clergy, and relieve themselves from inter- 
ference by the police, they only brought down on their 
shoulders the much more formidable oppression of their 
fellow-religionists and fellow-parishioners. Resistance 
to the payment of tithes very soon grew into organised 
resistance to the payment of rent. When men were 
made prisoners for nearly any offence of this kind it was 
found practically impossible to obtain a conviction. 



I02 2'he Irish Tithe War. 1832 

Lord Grey announced on one occasion that the Govern- 
ment were determined to enforce the law while it existed, 
but enforcement of the law in any practical sense was 
now out of the question. With great good fortune and 
almost supernatural courage and energy the Government 
might possibly have succeeded in punishing any very 
daring and exceptional offender against the public peace, 
but the idea of securing the collection of tithes by any 
administrative energy or ability was no longer to be 
entertained by any rational creature. Armies could not 
have collected the tithes, and the very efforts to collect 
them only brought increased and increasing hardship 
and distress on the poorer of the Protestant clergy them- 
selves. Active resistance may be easily put down, even 
by a weak Government, but a determined and organised 
passive resistance, suppressed here and there, but al- 
ways reforming itself on opportunity and having the sym- 
pathy of the great mass of the community, is beyond the 
reach of any administrative power. 

Many of the Protestant clergymen themselves were be- 
ginning to find their positions untenable, and to lament the 
unavailing bloodshed which attended the effort to collect 
the obnoxious tithes. Their own interests were gradually 
bringing them to join with their opponents in desiring an 
abolition of the system. A committee of the House of 
Lords reported that a complete extinction of tithes was 
required, not only for the welfare of Ireland but for the 
interests of the Church itself, and added that this extinc- 
tion might be obtained " by commuting them for a charge 
upon land," or by "an exchange for an investment in 
land." A committee of the House of Commons made a 
report in which they declared themselves unable to shut 
their eyes to the absolute necessity of an extensive change 
in the present system of providing for the ministers of 



1832 Government Action. 103 

the Established Church. They gave it as their opinion 
that such a change, to be satisfactory and secure, " must 
involve a complete extinction of tithes, including those of 
lay impropriators, by commuting them for a charge upon 
land." These reports, therefore, from the two Houses of 
Parliament, were produced in 1832. They practically 
agreed in purpose, and each of them suggested a tempo- 
rary measure for the relief of the interests now suffering 
under the struggle. They recommended that the Gov- 
ernment should be authorised to advance to every incum- 
bent a sum not exceeding the amount due to him as tithes 
for 1 83 1, and that the Government should then be au- 
thorised to buy up the arrears of tithes and to repay 
itself for its advances out of the sum which they might 
recover. 

On March 8, 1832, the Government announced their 
intention to take steps to give effect to the object of these 
reports. It was also announced that the Government 
desired to supplement their measure for the temporary 
collection of tithes by some Bill which would result in 
their absolute extinction, either by commuting them for 
a charge on land or exchanging them for real property. 
The House of Lords accepted the measure easily enough, 
with no resistance greater than was contained in a pro- 
test from Lord Eldon. The House of Commons were 
not equally willing to accept the scheme. On the part 
of the Irish members it was insisted that the only change 
was to turn the Government into a tithe collector, and 
that the existence of tithes, not the mode of their collec- 
tion, was the grievance of which Ireland complained. 
The Government, however, succeeded in carrying three 
resolutions, affirming that a difficulty had arisen, that it 
would be expedient for the time to distribute a sum of 
money among distressed incumbents, and authorising the 



I04 The Irish Tithe War. 1834 

Government to collect the tithes the best way they could, 
in order to recover these advances. Having obtained 
the carrying of these resolutions, they went a little 
further by adding two resolutions which pledged the 
Legislature to deal with the tithe system as a whole at 
the earliest opportunity. The Bill, when thus made 
complete, was opposed in various ways in both Houses, 
but it carried substantial majorities at each reading and 
at each stage, and finally passed into law. 

Year after year the Government kept tinkering at the 
tithe system. They tried various plans of composition 
for tithes, now leaving the task of collection to the land- 
lord who compounded, and now accepting it as the busi- 
ness of the State and making grants of money to supply 
deficiencies. O'Connell once said the Government had 
made the Lord-Lieutenant tithe-proctor-general for Ire- 
land. But the viceregal tithe-proctor could not get 
in his tithes any more than the parson's tithe-proctor 
had done. In 1833 the arrears of tithes amounted to 
nearly a million and a quarter of money. The Govern- 
ment prevailed on the House of Commons to advance a 
million to be handed over to the tithe owners on the 
security of the arrears, and the House saw the water 
poured into the sieve. The tithe question was but a part 
of the Church question in Ireland. That general question 
was brought up in 1834 by Mr. Ward, one of the most 
rising among the new members of the House of Com- 
mons. He was a son of that Plumer Ward, author of a 
popular novel once called " Tremaine," which now lives 
in the memory of novel readers less by virtue of its own 
merits than by the fact that it is referred to in Lord 
Beaconsfield's "Vivian Grey." Henry Ward won some 
distinction afterwards as an administrator in the Ionian 
Islands and in Ceylon. Mr. Walpole, in his "His- 



1834 ^^^ Irish Church. 105 

tory of England," says that Ward is remembered by 
a few persons " for the witty epigram which praises his 
memory at the expense of his affections." The epigram 
is: 

Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it ; 
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it. 

These hnes, however, we think, were not written for 
Henry Ward. They were written by Rogers and re- 
ferred to John W. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley and 
Ward. Henry Ward, however, was at this time a rising 
politician, and had formed very strong opinions with 
regard to the condition and the revenues of the Irish 
Church. He was convinced that the revenues were much 
more than sufficient for the requirements of the Establish- 
ment, and that any surplus not needed for the Church 
ought to be appropriated by Parliament to other and 
more public purposes. He brought forward a resolution 
setting forth this opinion. The debate on the resolution 
was fixed for May 27, 1834, and it formed an era in the 
history of the Irish Church Establishment. 

Many persons, among whom Lord Palmerston was 
one, were of opinion that Mr. Ward, in bringing forward 
his motion, was acting merely on the inspiration of Lord 
Durham. It is not at all unlikely that Lord Durham 
may have suggested the course which at that time seemed 
so bold. 

Mr. Ward's motion declared "that the Protestant 
Episcopal Establishment in Ireland exceeds the spiritual 
Avants of the Protestant population, and that it being the 
right of the State to regulate the distribution of Church 
property in such manner as Parliament may determine, 
it is the opinion of this House that the temporal pos- 
sessions of the Church of Ireland as now established 



io6 The Irish Tithe War. 1834 

ought to be reduced." This would seem to us now to be 
so plain a statement of fact as hardly to call for any 
argument. But at that time it was regarded as the in- 
troduction of a new and daring principle. The argu- 
ments with which Mr. Ward sustained his proposition 
went in their tendency far beyond the limits of the reso- 
lution which he moved. The purpose of the resolution 
really was to lay down the principle that the State had a 
right to consider the existence of the Irish Church as de- 
pendent upon its practical uses for the Irish people. Mr. 
Ward went on to show that the tithe collection was the 
principal cause of the disturbance and tumult that had 
lately been spreading over Ireland. He proved that the 
objection and resistance to the payment of tithes was not 
now any longer confined to the Catholics only. It had 
spread from Catholics to Protestants, from one part of 
the country to all parts. The arrangement in existence 
at that time and established by Government compromise 
would end with the close of the autumn, and then either 
the Church must fall back to its old rough system of 
tithe collection or be maintained out of the civil funds of 
the State. The tithe-collectors had tried civil law and 
military force, and in vain. Mr. Ward mentioned the 
astonishing fact that for a period of about eight years 
there had been maintained in Ireland an army almost 
exactly as strong as that which was required for the 
government of our whole Indian Empire. It fell short 
only by one-third of the military strength which was 
needed to occupy all our colonies in the rest of the 
world besides. From 1825 to 1833 the military force 
had been little below 20,000 at its lowest and about 
23,000 at its highest. During the year preceding Mr. 
Ward's motion this military force had cost more than a 
million of money. The cost of the police force was 



1834 ^'^ Irish Church, 107 

about 3(X>,ooo/. in addition. The Government had 
spent 26,000/. in collecting 12,000/. of tithes. Mr. Ward 
also pointed out one great abuse of the Irish Church 
system, which consisted in the grossly unfair distribution 
of its revenues, the immense sums paid to clergymen 
who had nothing to do, and the exceedingly small and 
miserable stipends doled out to some of the clergy who 
did whatever work there was to be done. There were 
nearly as many clergy non-resident as resident. Some 
of the non-resident clergy had benefices varying in 
value from 800/. to 2,800/. a year. Some of the resident 
clergy, who did the work, had in certain cases incomes 
as low as 20/. a year. An income of 70/. was above the 
average. What kind of respect, Mr. Ward asked, can 
the Irish people have for such an institution, when 
they see its actual work done for a miserably small sum, 
and the great bulk of its revenue given away to men 
who do nothing ? How, he asked, is it possible to sup- 
pose that the existence of such an institution, worked in 
such a way, could attract the Irish Catholics towards it 
and make them feel inclined to seek comfort in its minis- 
trations ? He showed that rather less than one-four- 
teenth of the whole population of Ireland belonged to 
the State Church. Indeed, he brought together such a 
monstrous array of anomalies and abuses as probably 
could not have been found in the contemporary history 
of any other civilized country. Mr. Ward recommended 
a redistribution of the Church revenues in some way 
which might proportion the pay to the work, and give 
the pay to the men who did the work. With regard to 
the tithe system, he was for its entire abolition, because, 
as he showed, the grievance was not one which could be 
remedied by any improvement in the manner of collect- 
ing the tax. The objection was deep and essential, and 



io8 The Irish Tithe War. 1834 

consisted in the fact that the great majority who paid the 
tax for the support of the Church were Catholics, who 
did not acknowledge its supremacy and who could never 
be induced to cross the threshold of any of its temples. 
Mr. Ward made it clear that the maintenance of the 
Church, such as it was, cost the Government a sum of 
money far beyond the value of the revenues attached to 
the Church, large as they were, and that even as a mat- 
ter of economy it would be cheaper to pay the Irish 
clergy out of the public funds than to allow the existing 
system to continue any longer. 

The motion was seconded by Mr. Grote, the historian 
of Greece. Even at this comparatively early day the 
best independent intellect of the House of Commons 
was already engaged in an effort to draw the attention of 
the country to the vast fundamental difference between 
the conditions of the State Church in Ireland, and those 
of the State Church in England. Mr. Grote's speech 
was a remarkable contribution to a memorable debate. 
He addressed himself chiefly to the task of showing how 
wide was the difference between the principles on which 
the two State Churches rested. His speech was in fact 
a clear and just argument to show that not only were the 
principles different but that they were fundamentally 
antagonistic. Those, he said, who compared the two 
churches would only degrade the one without elevating 
the other. They were not only not the same, but they 
were actually opposed in spirit and in principle. One 
church, as he showed, rested its claim to be national on 
the plain broad fact that it represented the religious 
convictions of the great majority of the people. More 
than this it was, from its representative position, in this 
respect the natural and the only guardian of what we 
may call the waifs and strays of the population. If a 



1834 Divisions in the Cabinet. 109 

parentless child were found in the streets or were 
brought to one of the public institutions, nothing could 
be more reasonable, nothing in fact could be more neces- 
sary, than that it should be supposed to belong to the 
Church which expressed the religious feelings of the 
great bulk of the English people. On the other hand 
the State Church in Ireland represented at the very most 
the religious opinions of one-fourteenth of the popula- 
tion, and both Mr. Ward and Mr. Grote gave it as their 
opinion that one-fourteenth was too large a proportion 
for the members of the Episcopalian Church when com- 
pared with the Roman Catholics and the Dissenters of 
Ireland. Mr. Grote's speech, though very short, was 
very effective, and must, one would think, have made 
some impression on the political intelligence of the 
time. 

It was known already to everyone that Mr. Ward's 
motion was certain to lead to distraction and to division 
in the Cabinet itself. Lord Brougham had been endea- 
vouring to establish a compromise by suggesting that a 
commission should be appointed to inquire into the re- 
venues of the Irish Church, and the proportion which her 
revenues bore to the whole population of Ireland. It is 
clear that this was a suggestion which opponents of dis- 
establishment could not possibly accept. A man like 
Lord Stanley, for instance, whose principle it was that 
the Irish Church must be maintained, both as a piece of 
mechanism for the sustentation of English power and as 
a possible agency towards the ultimate conversion of the 
Irish people to Protestantism, could not possibly admit 
that the future fate of the Church should depend upon 
the proportion of worshippers which entered the doors of 
its temples. Once start such a principle as this, and the 
result, however long postponed, was certain to follow. 



no The Irish Tithe War. 1834 

Once admit that the State had the right to dispose of 
the revenues of the Irish Church itself with any regard 
for the opinions and professions of the majority of the 
Irish pubhc, and there could be no issue but one ; the 
Church State Establishment must fall. Lord Stanley, 
therefore, set himself against any compromise and any 
commission such as Brougham proposed. Mr. Ward's in- 
troduction of his motion led at once to the resignation of 
Lord Stanley the Colonial Secretary, Sir James Graham 
First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Ripon Privy Seal, and 
the Duke of Richmond Postmaster-General. On the 
very night when Mr. Ward brought forward his motion 
Lord Althorp learnt that his colleagues had resigned, 
and rose to ask the House for the adjournment of the 
debate. 

It was after Mr. Grote's speech that Lord Althorp 
thus appealed to the House of Commons to consent to an 
adjournment, because, as he said, of facts which had 
come to his knowledge since the debate began. He 
frankly acknowledged that it was not in his power at 
present to state the exact nature of the facts, but he 
appealed to the House to accept his assurance, that he 
would not have made such a proposition withoujt having 
been satisfied of its propriety and its necessity. Every- 
one knew at once that the Ministerial crisis had come. 
Everyone knew also what its cause and its nature must 
have been, and most people were able even to tell in 
advance the names of the men on both sides who were 
concerned in the undoubted disruption of the Ministry. 
Before the crisis was complete some of the independent 
or semi-independent friends of the Ministry hastened to 
get up an address to Lord Grey, imploring him, what- 
ever might happen, to remain at the head of the Govern- 
ment, and declaring that the confidence of the House of 



1834 Changes in the Ministry, iii 

Commons and of the country was still entirely given to 
him. Lord Grey, in replying to the address, declared 
that he was prepared to make every personal sacrifice in 
support of the principles for which he had taken office, 
but he complained in his clear, cold, and somewhat 
sharp manner, of the harm that was being done to the 
progress of Liberal principles by the heedless desire for 
innovation. He declared that to him it seemed indispen- 
sable, if any improvement was to be made in the institu- 
tions of the country, that the Government should be 
allowed to go on with deliberation and with caution, and 
that they should not be harassed by a constant pressure 
from without to go further and faster than seemed neces- 
sary to them. Lord Grey's reply made it more clear than 
almost anything else had done that a crisis had arisen in 
the history, not merely of the Whig Cabinet but of. the 
Liberal party. It was evident that the time had now 
come when a certain number of the Whigs were disin- 
clined to go any further. The Liberal party was now 
distinctly dividing itself into Whigs and Radicals. On 
the other hand some who up to that moment were Whigs 
were now clearly about to fall away and join the Con- 
servative ranks. The impulse and the energy of the 
reform movement had welded together for a certain time 
three strands of the party, the Conservative portion, the 
Whig portion, the Radical portion. The strands were 
now about to separate. 

The adjournment of the debate took place as a matter 
of course. There was nothing to be done but to adjourn 
and give the Government time to reorganize itself. The 
discussion was resumed with the reconstitution of the 
Ministry. Lord Conyngham had become Postmaster- 
General in place of the Duke of Richmond. Lord Auck- 
land had taken Sir James Graham's position at the head 



112 The Irish Tithe War. 1834 

of the Admiralty, Lord Carlisle became Privy Seal, and 
Mr. Spring-Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, who had 
been for some years Secretary of the Treasury, succeeded 
Lord Stanley in the Colonial Office. When the debate 
was renewed Lord Althorp rose and announced to Mr, 
Ward that the Government had made up their minds to 
issue a commission to inquire into the whole question as 
to the revenues and organisation of the Irish Church, 
and he appealed to Mr. Ward to withdraw his motion in 
favour of this proposal, urging that there would have to 
be an inquiry by commission or otherwise before legis- 
lation could take place even if Mr. Ward's motion were 
carried, and therefore it would be as well to save the 
trouble of a debate and a division, and issue a commis- 
sion at once. To this Mr. Ward made a very reasonable 
answer. He admitted that the commission would have 
to be issued, but if his resolution were carried the com- 
mission would be issued under very different auspices 
from those which would surround it if it were to be issued 
before the adoption of his motion. His resolution, if 
carried, would pledge the House of Commons to the 
principle that the revenues of the State Church in Ireland 
were absolutely under the control of Parliament. That 
principle, it is true, the present Ministry fully acknow- 
ledged, and therefore a commission issued by them 
would no doubt be animated by the recognition of such 
a fact. But they might go out of office at any m^oment. 
Facts occurring every day showed that their tenure of 
power was not particularly secure, nor their continued 
coherence much to be depended on. Their successors, 
therefore, would be by no means pledged to any such 
principle, or to any course of action to follow a report 
from the commission. On the other hand a distinct 
and deliberate vote of the House of Commons would 



1834 The Previous Question. - 113 

undoubtedly, Mr. Ward contended, have some influence 
over the action of any subsequent Ministry, however 
ilhberal and reactionary. He therefore firmly refused 
to withdraw his motion. Lord Althorp then said he 
had no course left but to evade the difficulty by moving 
the previous question- 
Perhaps it may be an advantage to some of our read- 
ers unskilled in the formalities of the House of Com- 
mons, to explain what is meant by moving the previous 
question. A motion for some particular purpose is be- 
fore the House of Commons. That motion is what is 
called a question. The Government are not disinclined 
to admit the principle contained in the motion, but they 
have some reason for thinking the present time unsuited 
for such a debate. They are unable to vote for the 
motion because they think its discussion inconvenient 
and perhaps dangerous just then. They do not feel 
inclined to vote directly against it, because that might 
imply that they are opposed to its general principle, 
which they are not. It is therefore open to them to get 
outofthe difficulty by moving "the previous question, "as 
it is called; that is, by raising the question whether the 
motion ought to be put. They move, in substance, as an 
amendment that this is not the proper time for discussing 
the question, and that the motion before the chair be not 
put to a division. Lord Althorp voted in this instance 
that Mr. Ward's motion be not put to a division. The 
debate which followed was animated, and is interesting to 
read even now. On the part of the Government the only 
case urged against Mr. Ward's motion was that which 
we have already suggested, that the Government were 
about to issue a commission, that inquiry must follow in 
any case, and therefore the adoption of the motion was a 
mere waste of power and loss of time. On the other 



114 The Irish Tithe War. 1834 

hand, Lord Stanley and Sir Robert Peel strongly opposed 
the motion on direct and simple grounds. Lord Stanley 
contended, and justly, that the adoption of such a motion 
associated the existence of the Irish State Church in 
principle with the proportion of representation which it 
had in the community. He contended, and justly, that 
by admitting Mr. Ward's motion Parliament claimed for 
itself the right to abolish a State Church in Ireland al- 
together, if the proportion of its worshippers were greatly 
below that of the rest of the community. He contended 
that, according to the principle of a State Church, it did 
not matter how few were the worshippers : he urged, in- 
deed, that the fewer there were, the more necessity there 
was for such an institution. What, he asked, is there in 
our Parliamentary system which, if this resolution were 
passed, would not leave the Government open to esta- 
blish a Roman CathoHc Church in Ireland if they thought 
fit ? Of course the answer to this is plain. As long as 
the Imperial Government recognises the Protestant 
as the State religion, it is certain that it will not establish 
a Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. On the other 
hand it is equally certain that if the majority of the 
English people were Roman Catholics, and were inclined 
to maintain a State Church, they would establish a 
Catholic Church. We cannot have the same State 
Church resting on the principle of a majority in England 
and on the principle of a minority in Ireland. But Lord 
Stanley was right in saying that the moment we recognise 
the supremacy of numbers at all we foredoom an institu- 
tion like the State Church in Ireland. Sir Robert Peel 
dwelt strongly on that feeblest of all arguments (so feeble 
that it seems at this distance of time a marvel to find 
it put forward by so great a statesman), the argument that 
the CathoHcs had pledged themselves at the time of their 



1834 ^^^<^ Governme7it Co7nmission. 115 

emancipation, from the lips of Grattan, and even in the 
preambles of Acts of Parliament, not to ask for any 
measure which could affect the Established Church in 
Ireland. It seems marvellous how such a man could 
have relied on such an argument, or could have assumed 
that it was in the power of one generation of men to bind 
their successors to a surrender of any fair and legitimate 
claims. Of course when a generation of men are seek- 
ing some right which they greatly desire to have, they are 
ready enough to undertake that if they get this they will 
ask for no more. The mere fact that such a promise is 
made is more discreditable to those who accept than to 
those who make it. It can hardly be serious in the 
mouths of those who make it or in the minds of those 
who receive it. The argument had been torn to pieces 
by Sydney Smith and by other authors, even before Sir 
Robert Peel put it forward thus gravely again. O'Connell 
spoke in the debate, and spoke with robust good sense as 
well as with eloquence. He especially cautioned the 
Government against refusing justice to the Irish people 
and so driving them into despair, and into that conspiracy 
Vvhich he truly said was the natural offspring of despair. 
The House divided after a long debate on the issue that 
the question be now put. One hundred and twenty mem- 
bers voted in favour of putting Mr. Ward's resolution to 
the vote and 369 against it. A majority of 276 declared, 
therefore, that the motion was not to be put. 

The House hastened to adopt the suggestion of the 
Government for the issue of a commission. A puzzled 
Government always falls back on the appointment of a 
commission. Lord Stanley tried in vain to oppose this 
compromise, and to show that even the appointment of 
a commission involved a principle destructive of the very 
existence of the Established Church. He found little 



ii6 The Irish Tithe War. 1834 

support for this extreme view among the more sensible 
members of the Tory party. Sir Robert Peel himself 
was quite willing to consider the propriety and feasibility 
of redistributing the property of the Church. So far did 
Peel go in this direction, that it was sneeringly suggested 
that he ought to have succeeded to the place in the 
Whig Government vacated by Lord Stanley. As a 
matter of expediency and of compromise, Sir Robert Peel 
was undoubtedly right ; but, on the other hand, the view 
of Lord Stanley was sound and prophetic as regards the 
fate of the Established Church in Ireland. It is not true 
that the appointment of a commission involved a princi- 
ple destructive of the very existence of an Established 
Church, that is of any Established Church. The right 
ofthe State to redistribute the revenues and reorganise 
the system of an Established Church in a country 
whose religious opinions it fairly and fully represent- 
ed would by no means involve any principle fatal 
to its existence. But in a country where five out of 
every six of the people were resolutely opposed to the 
teachings of the State Church, and could never, under 
any conditions, be brought to cross the threshold of one 
of its Church buildings, the moment inquiry set in as to 
the appropriation of its revenues and the right of the 
State to redistribute them, then indeed, as Lord Stanley 
contended, the principle was admitted which must inevit- 
ably lead to its destruction. Thirty-five years later the 
principle which the House of Commons adopted when 
they accepted the compromise suggested by Lord Broug- 
ham, was pushed to its legitimate conclusion in the famous 
suspensory resolutions introduced by Mr. Gladstone when 
in opposition, and the schemes for the disestablishment 
and disendowment of the Irish Church which he carried 
through when in office. 



1834 The New Parliament. . 117 

There was fresh effort at tithe compromises, and the 
Government got into trouble about the renewal of an 
Irish Coercion Act. Tired of political life, glad of any 
excuse to escape from it, Lord Grey resigned office, and 
the Ministry was reorganised, with Lord Melbourne for 
its leader. Few things are more curious than the con- 
trast between Lord Melbourne's political character and 
the general character of his administrative work. Lord 
Melbourne cared little or nothing for reform. He was 
not interested in change of any kind. He was a genial, 
easy-going, not incapable, man. The whole principle of 
his public life might well enough be illustrated in his own 
favourite remonstrance with energetic reformers and 
innovators, *' Can't you let it alone ?" He would gladly, 
if he could, have let every proposed change alone. 
Things seemed to be very well as they were. In any 
case he was not afforded, just now, much chance of 
undertaking important work. The King had gradually 
been turning more and more against his Whig Ministers, 
because of what he considered their lack of firmness on 
Church questions. In reply to an address delivered to 
him on his birthday by a deputation of the Irish prelates, 
the King made a speech filled with the most earnest 
protestations of his determination to maintain the Church ; 
a speech which was in fact a spoken censure on his 
Ministry. No one was surprised, therefore, when on the 
occasion of a slight reconstruction of the administration, 
consequent on the death of Lord Althorp's father, which 
raised Lord Al thorp to the House of Lords, the King 
bluntly informed Lord Melbourne that he did not intend 
to go on with his present Ministers any longer. Sir 
Robert Peel was summoned from Rome to form an ad- 
ministration. Sir Robert Peel undertook the task, but 
thought it necessary to dissolve Parliament and appeal to 



ii8 , The Irish Tithe War. 1835 

the country. The result of the general election brought 
little comfort to the Tories. The Whigs lost much of 
their overwhelming power, but they still remained strong 
enough to command a majority against the Government 
on any convenient occasion. Peel saw a trying task 
before him. Few tasks can be more painful and humili- 
ating to a high-spirited statesman than to have to try to 
govern with a minority, knowing that there is a sure 
majority ready at any moment to declare against him. 

The new Parliament met on February 19, 1835. The 
opposing parties had a trial of strength in the election 
of a Speaker. The Government was defeated by ten 
votes; 316 voted one way and 306 the other. Sir Robert 
Peel, however, was resolved that he would not resign his 
office, but struggle on as best he could. He was again 
defeated on the moving of the Address, an amendment 
being carried by a majority of seven. Still he did not 
think he was called upon to resign, considering the diffi- 
culties by which the Government of every kind was em- 
barrassed just then. He resolved to do the best he could 
to carry on the administration. On March 30, Lord John 
Russell moved a resolution calling on the House to 
form itself into a committee to consider the state of the 
Church Establishment in Ireland, with the view of ap- 
plying any surplus of the revenues not required for the 
spiritual care of its members to the education of all 
classes of the people^ without distinction of religious de- 
nomination. Sir Robert Peel of course strongly opposed 
the motion, and he was supported by Lord Stanley and 
Sir James Graham. Mr. O'Connell spoke strongly for 
the motion. "I shall content myself," he said, "by 
laying down the broad principle that the revenues of the 
Church ought not to be raised from a people who do not 
belong to it." The result of a long debate was another 



183s Lord MorpetJC s Tithes Bill. 119 

defeat of the Government; 322 voted for the motion, and 
289 against it, A new discussion on the question of 
Irish tithes exposed the Ministers to yet another defeat. 
Sir Robert Peel found it impossible to continue in office 
any longer. He resigned on April 8. An effort was 
made to induce Lord Grey to form an administration, but 
Lord Grey was not to be tempted, and the King was at 
last obliged to send for Lord Melbourne. A few days 
later an administration was formed, Lord Melbourne for 
First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Lansdowne President 
of the Council, Lord Palmerston Foreign Secretary, Lord 
John Russell Home Secretary, and Mr. Spring-Rice 
Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

Among other members of the new Government may 
be mentioned Sir Henry Parnell, whose motion not long 
before had upset the Government of the Duke of Wel- 
lington. Sir J. C. Hobhouse, the friend of Byron, took 
charge of the India Department. Lord Morpeth became 
Chief Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 

The new Government had come into power by de- 
feating their predecessors on the subject of the Irish 
Church and Irish tithes, and, of course, they had to un- 
dertake some sort of legislation in harmony with the 
professions and the policy which they relied upon when 
in opposition. Accordingly, on June 26, 1835, Lord Mor- 
peth introduced a Tithe Bill. Lord Morpeth was the 
eldest son of Lord Carlisle. He was well known in later 
days as one of the most pleasing and popular Viceroys 
Ireland ever had. He was a man of a certain graceful 
literary style, both in writing and in speaking, of agree- 
able, kindly manners, and winning social ways. He 
might have been a successful Viceroy if his lot had been 
cast in times when genial good manners and graceful 
accomplishments were sufficient stock-in-trade for a 



120 The Bish Tithe War. 1835 

Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. At the time, however, to 
which we now refer, he was practically an untried states- 
man learning his business in the Irish Office. His 
Tithes Bill was a distinct advance on anything which 
his predecessors had introduced. Twelve years before, 
Mr. Goulburn had introduced the principle of the volun- 
tary composition of tithes. Nine years later Mr. Stanley 
had made composition compulsory. In 1834 Mr. Little- 
ton endeavoured to convert the composition into a rent 
charge. In 1835 the Government proposed to convert 
the tithe itself into a rent charge. All parties, therefore, 
had come to an agreement that the tithe as a burden 
should be transferred from the occupier to the owner, 
and all too were willing that the rent charge should be 
much smaller than the tithe, and that the titheoAvner 
should sacrifice some portion of his income in return for 
the better security he was to have. Lord Morpeth pro- 
posed to reduce the rent charge to a lower amount than 
any of his predecessors. He proposed to commute one 
hundred pounds of tithe for seventy pounds of rent 
charge. He proposed to charge on the owner of the 
tithes the cost of collection, and to abandon to the owner 
the uncollected arrears of tithes on the security of which 
the Government had made liberal advances of money. 
But his measure did not stop with the simple adjustment 
of tithes. He proposed to act on the spirit of Lord John 
Russell's resolution, and introduce certain appropriation 
clauses, as they were called, to deal with the surplus 
revenues of the Irish Church. No presentation was to 
be made for the time to any benefice which did not con- 
tain at least fifty members of the Church of England. 
But in order to provide meanwhile for the religious ac- 
commodation of the members of that Church, it. was pro- 
posed that in parishes where there was no church the 



^S35~3^ RusselV s Tithes Bill. 121 

minister of the adjoining parish was to receive an addi- 
tional 5/. a year for the cure of souls which might be 
supposed to exist in the neighbouring district. This Bill 
was read a first time on July 7. Sir Robert Peel then at 
once announced that he approved of that part of the Bill 
which proposed to substitute a rent charge for tithes, but 
to the clauses which would appropriate to other purposes 
the property of the Church he was prepared to offer the 
strongest opposition. He allowed the Bill to be read a 
second time, but he announced his intention to move in 
committee that it be divided into two parts, so that those 
who agreed with him in thinking the existing tithe sys- 
tem ought to be abolished would be free to support that 
part of the measure without assenting to the other part of 
it, which dealt with the revenues and arrangements of 
the Church. When the House went into committee'. Sir 
Robert Peel's amendment to divide the Bill into two was 
rejected by a majority of 319 against 282. This majority 
was not large enough to bear down the opposition of the 
Lords, and accordingly, when the Bill reached the Upper 
House the Peers adopted the advice which Sir Robert 
Peel had given to the Commons. They passed that part 
of the Bill which substituted a rent charge for tithes, and 
by an enormous majority they struck out the part which 
dealt with the revenue of the Church. Lord Morpeth's 
attempt therefore had come to nothing. The Bill was 
withdrawn. 

The same difficulty followed the proposed reform 
through successive years. The Conservatives per- 
sistently refused to agree to any Bill which dealt with any 
part of the revenues of the State Church. On the other 
hand, the Government were pledged deeply and again 
and again to pass no Bill which did not contain an ap- 
propriation clause. In 1836 Lord Morpeth brought on 



122 The Irish Tithe War. 1835-38 

his measure again, but the appropriation clause was only 
carried by 290 votes against 264. Naturally this gave 
the Peers fresh encouragement. Once again they muti- 
lated the Bill. The Commons refused to accept the 
amendments, and the Tithe Bill was a failure once more. 
In 1838 Lord John Russell took up the subject. He in- 
troduced a Bill based on the principle which his pre- 
decessors had adopted. He proposed to convert the 
tithe composition into a rent charge of seventy per cent, 
of the nominal value of the tithe, and to secure this income 
to existing incumbents by the guarantee of the State. 
Despite a sort of promise given by Sir Robert Peel 
that the conservatives would not oppose the measure if 
it did not contain a sweeping appropriation clause, there 
was a strong opposition made to it by the Tories. Finally, 
Lord John Russell consented so far to modify his pro- 
posal as to confine the measure merely to a Bill con- 
verting the tithe composition into a rent charge. He 
also went so far as to fix the rent charge at seventy-five 
per cent, instead of seventy, as he had at first proposed. 
They introduced clauses giving up the claim of the 
country to have the great advance already made to the 
titheowners repaid to the nation, and they agreed to 
devote a quarter of a million of money to the extinction 
of the remaining arrears. The more advanced party 
amongst the English Liberals were enraged at what they 
called a surrender of principle. They declared that the 
very object to maintain which Sir Robert Peel had been 
driven out of office had now been given up by the Whig 
administration. They insisted that Lord John Russell's 
Bill simply squandered immense sums of the national 
money on the Church of a minority. It is plain, indeed, 
that the Bill which was now passed was in substance the 
very measure which might have been obtained with the 



^S35"33 The Poor Laws, 123 

assent of Sir Robert Peel in 1835. The difficulty dur- 
ing many years had been that which we have already 
described, the question of appropriation — that is, of se- 
questration of part of the revenues of the State Church 
and interference with its internal arrangements. To 
secure that principle the Whigs had stood out against the 
Tories ; to prevent that principle from being adopted in 
legislation was for many years the sole object of the 
Tories. Both parties were willing to agree on the change 
of the tithe into a rent charge, and the Bill therefore 
which Lord John Russell passed in 1838 might have been 
passed many years sooner if the Whig Ministry could 
have made up their minds as to the distance they were 
willing to go in order to meet a compromise. Mean- 
while the agitation on Irish tithes had produced an agita- 
tion about English tithes as well. Many grievance's ex- 
isted in England as well as in Ireland, although, of 
course, they were not aggravated in England by the con- 
tinued and inevitable hostility between the State Church 
and the people. At the worst, in England, the tithe was 
unfairly levied and badly appropriated, but in Ireland it 
was like a humiliating tribute exacted by the conqueror 
from the conquered. The question was settled in 
England before its settlement in Ireland. A Bill intro- 
duced in 1836 by Lord John Russell made the commuta- 
tion of tithes compulsory, appointed commissioners to 
value the tithes on an average estimate of three crops 
during the seven preceding years, and awarded to the 
titheowner a commutation not less than sixty per cent, 
and not more than seventy-five per cent, of the nominal 
gross value of the tithe. This measure was passed with 
no practical modification. The commissioners soon suc- 
ceeded in getting at a rate of commutation for every 
parish, and the payment of tithe in kind came to an end 



124 Poor Law and Mimicipa I Reform. 1834 

in this country. The effect of the measure thus intro- 
duced was found in the end to be as satisfactory to the 
Church as it was to the tithe payers. The Church ob- 
tained a certain revenue in return for the very uncertain 
and haphazard kind of collection. The owners and 
occupiers found themselves rid of a very disagreeable 
and fluctuating kind of charge, the collection of which 
was troublesome, and the effect of which was very often 
to make the clergyman of the parish an object of dis- 
trust and dislike much more than of affection and con- 
fidence to his parishioners. But in Ireland the change 
in the system of tithe collecting was only a small part of 
a great, a necessary, and an inevitable reform, which, 
although seen by many even then to be inevitable, was 
postponed and resisted for more than a generation. 



CHAPTER IX. 

POOR LAW AND MUNICIPAL REFORM. 

Much of the misery of the rural labourer in England 
was to be traced directly to the condition of the poor law 
system. The famous statute of Elizabeth, which was 
intended to put a stop to vagrancy and mendicancy and 
to encourage industry, had been worked for generations 
in such a manner as to foster pauperism and create quite 
a disease of beggary. The laws of settlement, which 
were intended merely to protect districts from actual 
invasions of hordes of paupers, had practically put it in 
the power of parishes which were rich to turn over the 
surplus of their labouring population on smaller and 
poorer places. When the Reformed Parliament came 
into existence, Lord Grey and his colleagues determined 



1834 Parish Relief . 125 

to seek out some cure for the evils which were con- 
stantly increasing. They did what was invariably done 
by the Whig administrations of that time. They began 
by issuing a commission. That was a time when 
Sydney Smith said that the whole earth was put into 
commission by the Whigs. In this instance the com- 
mission was a very important matter, and was composed 
of men well qualified for the investigation. The com- 
mission appointed assistant commissioners to make the 
actual inquiries. The result of the investigation was to 
show that the poor law system was administered almost 
everywhere in such a manner as to engender abuses 
even where abuses had not previously existed. In many 
places the local tradesmen and the parish officers played 
into each other's hands, as the servants and the trades- 
men of a nobleman might be supposed to do. The 
tradesmen overcharged for every article they supplied to 
the parochial authorities, and the parish officers were 
bribed to assist them in this system of extortion. The 
poor rates were openly made use of for the purpose of 
bribing the holders of the franchise. But probably worse 
than all this was the manner in which the system en- 
couraged and promoted pauperism. The pauper in the 
workhouse was well fed, and too well fed, at the expense 
of the poor ratepayer, who, sometimes but one degree 
above the level of pauperism, was too independent to eat 
the bread of beggary while he could maintain himself 
and his family by any amount of incessant and hopeless 
labour. When a person had once taken poor-house 
relief it became a sort of property or inheritance. Once 
in the family it never got out of the family. Generations 
of paupers bequeathed to the country new generations of 
paupers. The character of a recipient was not held to 
be any reason for denying relief. He might be a well- 



126 Poor Law and Municipal Reform. 1834 

known thief. She might be a well-known prostitute. In 
either case the relief was given just when it was asked 
for. A father spent all his wages in drink, and came to 
get relief for his family when there was nothing to give 
them at home. In some places whole populations were 
turned into paupers. People lived on the relief given by 
the workhouse rather than on wages. Workhouse sup- 
port was constantly given in relief of wages. A farmer 
dismissed his labourers because he did not care to pay 
them the market price of labour ; they at once became 
paupers ; they received a certain contribution from the 
parish and then the farmer took them back and gave 
them employment at lower wages than before, so that 
in point of fact the local taxation became a sort of rate 
in aid of the farmers. In some places the manufacturers 
followed the example of the farmers, discharged their 
workpeople, and allowed them to become paupers in the 
receipt of parish relief, well knowing that when once 
they had begun to receive that relief no workhouse offi- 
cial would ever challenge their right to the continuance 
of the dole. They then re-employed them at much lower 
rates, and so received a subsidy from the parochial funds 
in aid of their business. It has been distinctly stated 
that the commissioners found many cases in which men 
spent their wages as rapidly as they could, in drink or in 
amusement, in order that they might be able to say they 
had actually nothing and so be entitled to get their 
names on the workhouse list. In fact, to have one's 
name put down as a recipient of workhouse relief was 
like having it put down on a pension list. Once put 
down it was not supposed that it would be taken off again 
unless at the request of the recipient himself. The re- 
lieving-officer's book was to the low class ne'er-do-well 
what the pension list was to his aristocratic fellow. It 



1834 The Poor Law Commission^ 127 

seems almost needless to say that such a system encour- 
aged early improvidence and reckless marriages. A man 
might as well marry as not, for he received relief, his 
wife would receive relief, and as his children began to 
grow up they would come in for their share of the 
general subsidy. The evil had grown so great that some 
eminent reformers were positively of opinion that the 
only remedy would be the entire abolition of the poor 
laws, leaving the relief of genuine pauperism to the 
operation of private benevolence, energy, and super- 
vision. 

The commissioners, however, were not of opinion 
that so sweeping a remedy could be attempted. They 
held that the principle of public relief was that a certain 
provision should be made for that surplus, or residuum 
as it may be called, of every population, the infirm and 
the aged who have no friends to support them ; for those 
who, under some temporary pressure, cannot obtain 
work, however wilHng to take it; and likewise, it may be 
added, for those who even by their idleness or miscon- 
duct had brought themselves into such a condition, that if 
not fed for a time at the public expense, they needs must 
commit actual crime or else lie down and starve. The 
principal recommendations of the commissioners were 
based on the principle that the then existing system of 
poor laws was " destructive to the industry, forethought, 
and honesty of the labourers, to the wealth and morality 
of the employers of labour andthe owners of property, and 
to the mutual goodwill and happiness of all." The com- 
missioners declared that the system "collects and chains 
down the labourers in masses, without any reference to 
the demand for their labour ; that while it increases their 
numbers it impairs the means by whjch the*fund for their 
subsistence is to be reproduced, and impairs the motives 



128 Poor Law and Municipal Reform. 1 834 

for using those means which it suffers to exist ; and that 
every year and every day these evils are becoming more 
overwhelming in magnitude and less susceptible of cure." 
The evils, they held, might be at least diminished by the 
combination of workhouses, and by a rigid administra- 
tion and practical management instead of the existing 
" neglect, extravagance, robbery, and fraud," An altera- 
tion or abolition of the law of settlement might, the 
commissioners thought, save a great part or the whole of 
the enormous sums now spent in litigation and in re- 
movals, and allow the labourers to be distributed accord- 
ing to the demand for labour. They suggested that no 
relief should be given to the able-bodied or to their 
families except in return for adequate labour, or in a well 
regulated workhouse ; that thereby a broad line would 
be drawn between the independent labourers and the 
paupers; that the number of paupers would be imme- 
diately diminished in consequence of the reluctance of 
persons to accept relief on such terms ; and that pauper- 
ism would in the end, instead of forming a constantly in- 
creasing proportion of the population, become a small 
and well-defined part of it, capable of being provided for 
at less than half the amount of the existing poor rates. 
Finally, the commissioners recommended that the ad- 
ministration of the poor laws should be entrusted to the 
general superintendence of one central authority with 
extensive powers. 

A Bill framed on these recommendations and em- 
bodying them as nearly as possible, was introduced into 
Parliament. It naturally created a very strong opposition. 
There was everything in the proposed measure which 
could raise up against it all the sentimental feelings that 
tend to foster and cherish pauperism. Beggary had been 
so long an institution of the country that many persons 



1835 The Mu7iicipal Corporations. 129 

had come to regard it with a sort of kindly feehng, and 
had been accustomed to think that the relation between 
the mendicant and the donor was of a mutually improv- 
ing kind, something like that between a good master 
and a faithful servant. All that sort of easy benevolence 
by which we each of us feel inspired now and then 
when we are inclined to throw coppers among whining 
beggars in the street, raised itself in opposition to the 
somewhat stringent policy of the Government. The 
measure was, however, passed almost in its mtegrity 
through both Houses. The Duke of Wellington was 
liberc-l enough to give it his strong support, and to pro- 
test against the efforts of some of his own party in the 
House of Lords to oppose the Bill, in consequence of the 
lateness of the period at which it was introduced. It 
was carried into law, and we believe we may safely state 
that on the whole the hopes with which it was introduced 
have been well-sustained and the prophecies of evil have 
come to nothing. Many and various defects indeed have 
been found since that time and still exist in the working 
of the poor law. Many changes have been made which 
deviate a good deal from the rigid principle of self- 
dependence on which it was introduced. The adminis- 
tration of outdoor relief in large towns is still a source of 
much corruption and demoralisation. But it would be 
hardly possible to administer such a system with any 
regard to mercy, not to say generosity, and not at the 
same time to open the door to fraud and to depravity. 
In great towns it very often happens that the poor law 
officials, acting sternly in some particular case where 
they suppose relief is not really needed, make a complete 
mistake and deny assistance exactly where it is most 
imperatively required. Some poor creature dies at the 
door of a workhouse to which he or she has just been 

K 



130 Poor Law and Municipal Reform. 1835 

refused admission. Some old woman sends a pathetic 
appeal to the relieving officers ; they disbelieve her story 
or neglect the appeal, and after a while she is found by 
her neighbours dead from sheer starvation in her miser- 
able garret. Then a natural outcry is raised by the 
public. The feelings of every humane person are 
touched and the impression goes abroad that the work- 
house officials are hardened against all sense of pity. A 
relaxation in their system naturally takes place, and for 
a while outdoor relief is heedlessly given to almost any- 
one who asks for it. These, however, are only some of 
the casual defects of a system which by its very nature 
could hardly be so administered as not to fall into error 
every now and then. No one, we believe, will deny that 
on the whole the change in the poor law system made 
by Lord Grey's Government was wise and just, and has 
been attended with results even more satisfactory than 
those which its promoters might at one time have felt 
themselves entitled to expect. 

In 1835 Lord Melbourne's Government just settled 
firmly in office, took on themselves the task of reform- 
ing the whole system of municipal corporations. Lord 
John Russell had charge of the Bill which was to accom- 
plish this object. The reform of the municipal corpora- 
tions was a necessary sequel to the reform of the House 
of Commons itself. Petitions for reform had been pour- 
ing in from all manner of places, and Lord Althorp 
some years before had moved for a select committee to 
inquire into the state of municipal corporations in Eng- 
land and Ireland and Wales. Scotland was not inclu- 
ded within the terms of the inquiry, because it was 
understood that Lord Jeffi^ey, as Lord Advocate, would 
undertake to deal with the Scotch boroughs himself. 
The committee recommended the appointment of a 



1835 Municipal Comtption. 131 

commission capable of making inquiries locally into the 
state of each separate corporation. The inquiry began 
in 1833, and was not finished until after the opening of 
Parliament in 1835. The Report was a very interesting 
contribution to history. It traced the whole growth of 
the municipal corporation in this country. It showed 
how the institution began by the collecting together of a 
few men within a certain limited space, in order to carry 
on in security the humble trades by which they lived. 
All around them the great majority of their fellow-coun- 
trymen were the mere serfs of the local landlord. The 
traders found that a mere serf who had no rights of per- 
son or property which his landlord was bound to respect, 
could not with success carry on any trade or business. 
They therefore refused to admit the claims of the local 
magnate, and insisted on their right to personal freedom. 
Little colonies, brought together for the purposes of 
trade, became established in various parts of England, 
and were the first centres of personal and political lib- 
erty there. The man who had once proclaimed himself 
free, claimed the same right for his descendants. Not 
only that, but it was a condition of almost all these 
free settlements, that one who married a freeman's 
daughter should himself become a freeman. One who 
served an apprenticeship to trade became as free as his 
master when his time was out. When the traders thus 
formed themselves into little communities, they found it 
necessary to meet occasionally and talk over common 
measures. In time it was found that large public meet- 
ings could not serve the purpose, and so the affairs of 
each locality were entrusted to committees, and these 
committees gradually grew into what we now call local 
corporations. 

Some of the English Sovereigns were especially 



132 Poor Law and Municipal Refor7n. 1 835 

anxious to conciliate the traders, who had the means of 
assisting them in many ways. The Tudor monarchs 
began to grant charters of incorporation to certain of 
these communities. In some cases the whole bulk of 
the resident freemen formed the corporation, but in a 
greater number of cases only a small and chosen body 
was constituted a municipality. After a while it was 
understood that the corporations consisted only of the 
ruling body. The government of a corporation was 
generally vested in a chief magistrate and a town coun- 
cil. In many small places the mayor had the authority 
almost entirely in his own hands, and not uncommonly 
dispensed as he pleased the revenues of the munici- 
pality. After a while corruption began to creep into 
many of these institutions. Most of the town councils 
were self-elected, and the members held their seats for 
life. They spent their funds as they pleased. They in- 
creased the salary of officers who had nothing to do. 
They lavished money on entertainments to themselves 
and their friends. They let out the property of the 
borough to their own members at merely nominal rents. 
They made every possible use of their position and their 
power to promote the success of the political party to 
which the majority happened to belong. Customs, tolls, 
or dues, which they were chartered to collect for public 
purposes, were in some cases coolly converted by the 
corporations into private property. The corporations 
had all varieties of jurisdiction. They had local courts 
of the most various authority. In some large towns their 
local courts were not empowered to try any case of felo- 
ny. In one or two very small places they had, on the 
contrary, the right to try capital cases, and even to pro- 
nounce the capital sentence. They had recorders in 
most cases to try criminal cases, but the recorder was 



1 8 35 Russell 's " Gigantic Lmovation. " 133 

not always a lawyer. In some places the recorder al- 
lowed twenty years or more to pass without taking the 
trouble to visit the seat of his local authority. In his 
absence the town clerk or somebody else tried the cases, 
and it occasionally happened that the town clerk, or 
other sub-deputy who acted in this capacity, was called 
upon to act as judge in some case which nearly con- 
cerned the interests, if not of himself, at least of some 
member of his family, or some partner in business. 

Both the great English political parties made use of 
the corporations, and with about equal recklessness, in 
order to promote their political interests. When Lord 
John Russell made an attack on the manner in which 
the Tory party had used their influence over certain 
rotten corporations. Sir Robert Peel retorted by de- 
scribing the case of the corporation of Derby. In Der- 
by, Peel stated, that whenever the Whigs thought that 
the number of freemen in their interest was getting low, 
the mayor or some other leading member of the corpora- 
tion applied to the agents of the Cavendish family, and re- 
quested a list of the names of persons who might be ad- 
mitted as honorary freemen. He also stated that on the 
last occasion when this application was made, the honor- 
ary freemen were almost all of them tenants of the Duke 
of Devonshire, and the fees on their admission were paid 
by the Duke's agents. Indeed, it is hardly necessary to 
point out that such a complicated, heterogeneous, and 
irresponsible system as that on which most of the cor- 
porations were founded must necessarily lead to corrup- 
tion. Where bodies of men are self-elected, where they 
are empowered, or at least empower themselves, to ad- 
minister without responsibility the revenues collected for 
public purposes and the property which belongs to the 
public ; where they can obtain exclusive commercial 



134 Poor Law and Municipal Reform. 1835 

and trading privileges, and assert for themselves the 
right to put in use the most various judicial authority ; 
and where, in addition, they can make themselves politi- 
cal engines, and assist in every way the poHtical party 
whose interests they desire to forward, it is not necessary 
to say that political and social corruption must be the 
inevitable result. 

The Whig Government determined to deal resolutely 
with these abuses. Lord John Russell, now leader of 
the House of Commons, introduced his Bill on June 5, 
1835. He proposed that it should apply to 183 boroughs 
not including the Metropolis, and containing an aggre- 
gate population of two millions of people, or an average 
of eleven thousand persons in each borough. In most 
cases he designed that the boundary of the parliamentary 
borough should be the boundary of the municipal borough 
likewise, and in a few cases the Crown was to have the 
right of defining the municipal borough. The governing 
body was to consist of a mayor and a council, and the 
councillors were to be elected by resident ratepayers. 
Twenty of the largest boroughs were to be divided into 
wards, and a certain number of councillors were to be 
elected by each ward. The rights of existing freemen 
were to be maintained, but as the freemen gradually died 
out the rights were to be extinguished. Exclusive trading 
privileges were to be abolished. The management of the 
charitable funds was to be entrusted to bodies chosen 
not from the council but from the ratepayers at large. 
The Crown was to nominate a recorder for each borough 
which was willing to provide a proper salary for the 
office, but the recorder was always to be a barrister of at 
least five years* standing. This seems to us now a very 
moderate measure of reform. It left a great many ano- 
malies and abuses untouched. But at the time of the 



1835 Freemen. 135 

introduction of the measure it was thought a most auda- 
cious attempt. It was regarded, to adopt a phrase that 
afterwards became famous in politics, as "a gigantic 
innovation.'* 

Sir Robert Peel followed Lord John Russell. He 
made a remarkable speech. He did not oppose the in- 
troduction of the Bill. On the contrary, he acknow- 
ledged the necessity for some sort of legislation on the 
subject, but he took advantage of the opportunity to find 
some fault with the Government scheme, and to make 
known once for all his own opinion with regard to muni- 
cipal reform. It was clear that he had no intention of 
acting the part of an obstructionist in regard to such 
legislation. He advised all members of corporations to 
concur readily in the amendment of the existing system, 
but on the express condition that there was to be a real 
and genuine reform, and that the occasion was not to be 
made a mere pretext for transforming power from one 
party in the State to another. What the country wanted, 
he declared, was a good system of municipal govern- 
ment, taking security, as far as security could be taken, 
that a really intelligent and respectable portion of the 
community of each town should be called to administer 
its municipal affairs, and that the future application of 
the charitable or corporate funds should never be diverted 
to any other than charitable and corporate purposes. 
Sir Robert Peel was not unreasonable in the fear which 
he expressed as to the possibility of municipal reform 
being made the means of advancing the interests of one 
party. At that time we are afraid that few public men 
had entirely emerged from the condition of political 
development which makes it seem fair to take advan- 
tage of such an opportunity for such a purpose. Mr. 
O'Connell expressed his approval of the measure, but 



136 Poor Law hnd Municipal Reform, 1835 

said that the title of the Bill wanted one word which 
greatly diminished its value ; it was called a Bill for the 
better regulation of Municipal Corporations in England 
and Wales. The word he wished to see introduced was 
" Ireland." It was shortly after stated that the Govern- 
ment intended to bring forward a Bill for Ireland of 
much the same nature as that for England and Wales. 

The Bill was read a second time on June 15, without 
a division, and was in committee for not quite a month. 
The Conservative party had begun to understand that 
mere obstruction is of little use when a strong force of 
public opinion is behind those who introduce a measure. 
It is also right to say that the opposition was very much 
mitigated by the conduct of Sir Robert Peel, who set 
himself to work sincerely to make a good measure of 
municipal reform out of the Government scheme, and 
did his best to prevent anything like unnecessary resist- 
ance. The chief objection which the Conservative party 
raised was to the clause which declared that after the 
passing of the Act no person should be elected a citizen, 
freeman, liveryman, or burgess of any borough in respect 
of any right and title other than that of occupancy and 
payment of rates within the borough. The object of this 
clause was to get rid of the system which allowed the 
freedom of a borough, and with it the parliamentary and 
municipal franchise, to be acquired by birth, apprentice- 
ship, purchase, marriage, or the favour of the corporation. 
These honorary freemen, as we may call them, had valu- 
able privileges in many boroughs. They had rights of 
pasturage, or a share in the commons near the towns, 
and of the proceeds of the sale of common land, if there 
should be any sold. In other places they had the privi- 
lege to enter free of toll in any fair or market. In others 
they shared in the monopoly of trade which was enjoyed 



1835 ^^ Lords and the Bill, 137 

by the resident freemen generally. An amendment was 
moved by Sir William FoUett, for the purpose of pre- 
serving the franchise for the freemen. Lord Grey had 
very unwillingly allowed existing freemen to retain the 
parliamentary franchise, and the clause in the Municipal 
Reform Bill would put an end to the future admission of 
freemen to that privilege. Sir William Follett insisted 
therefore that the clause was really a new measure of 
political reform, and contended that the Government 
had already pledged themselves that their Reform Act 
of 1832 was final. It was argued, with perhaps more 
show of justice, that if the freemen were to be deprived 
of the privilege which the Reform Bill allowed them to 
retain, it should be done by a separate Act of Parliament 
and not be brought in casually as a mere chance result 
of the reorganization of the municipalities. The argu- 
ment, however, of the Government and its supporters 
against the whole system was clear and direct. The 
freemen were not necessarily residents of the borough 
or ratepayers. They had no natural interest in its affairs 
or in its prosperity, and they were not open to the con- 
trol of its public opinion. They regarded their privilege 
in many cases merely as something to be sold. There 
was no reason why a man who had been in prison might 
not give a vote as well as the most respectable citizen. 
It would be impossible to reform any municipality if 
this class of persons were still to be allowed the control 
of its affairs. On the other hand, if they were unfit to 
exercise the municipal franchise, with what show of reason 
could the Government allow them the right to vote for 
members of Parliament ? The amendment, and others 
having the same object in view, were rejected. Mr. 
Molesworth, in his " History of England," points out 
that the Bill had "one most valuable, though indirect, 



138 Poor Law and Municipal Reform, 1 835 

effect," which was not contemplated perhaps by its au- 
thors. "By putting an end," he says, "to the rights ot 
apprenticeship and exclusive trading, it struck off one 
fetter on industry, as the poor law, in dealing with set- 
tlements, had struck off another. Both of them, by pre- 
venting men from trading or working where they would, 
interfered most mischievously with tlie freedom of la- 
bour." 

Sir Robert Peel proposed that in the case of the larger 
boroughs, members of the governing body should be re- 
quired to have personal property to the value of 1,000/., 
or to be rated on a rental of not less than 40/. a year, and 
that in the smaller boroughs the qualifications should be 
a' property of 500/., or a rated rental of 20/. a year. This 
proposal, too, was rejected, and was, indeed, in direct 
opposition to the spirit and purpose of the Bill. Mr. 
Grote took advantage of the opportunity to move that 
the ballot be employed in municipal elections. It is 
almost needless to say that he was unsuccessful. Nearly 
forty years more had to pass away, and the country had 
to go through an unspeakable amount of political and 
municipal corruption and degradation, before the mind 
of England could be brought to perceive the value of the 
system for which the historian of Greece pleaded so 
patiently and so long. The Bill was sent up to the 
House of Lords on July 21, without any material change 
in its character. The majority there were, of course, 
opposed to it. They had not the courage to reject it, 
especially after the stand which had been taken by Sir 
Robert Peel, but they determined to mutilate and mangle 
it as much as they thought it would be safe to attempt. 
The speech in which Lord Melbourne introduced the 
Bill, probably rather encouraged than discouraged the 
House of Lords in such a course. Lord Melbourne 



1837 Queen Victoria. 139 

was never a very earnest or resolute man, and he was 
already beginning to think that his administration was 
loosing a little of its hold on Parliament and the public. 
The House of Lords, therefore, took courage enough to 
introduce amendments into the Bill, virtually the same 
as those which the House of Commons had rejected. 
The Conservative peers with Lord Lyndhurst at their 
head went wild over the Bill. They seemed to have for 
the most lost their heads. They mutilated the Bill 
with reckless hands. They restored all, or nearly all, 
the anomalies which the Government had been endea- 
vouring to abolish. They positively introduced entirely 
novel anomalies and fresh springs of abuse into it. They 
contrived to make it a Bill for increasing the stringency 
of religious tests. Of course the House of Commons 
could not accept such alterations. Peel strongly dis- 
countenanced the wild attempts of Lord Lyndhurst and 
the Tory peers. Wellington advised the Tories to give 
way, and at last even Lyndhurst himself had to offer 
counsel of the same kind. Lord John Russell on his 
side recommended the Commons to yield a few small 
and unimportant points. The Lords saw no way out of 
the difficulty but to submit, and on September 7, 1835, 
the Bill, substantially the same as when it left the House 
of Commons, became the law of the land. 



CHAPTER X. 

LEGAL AND SOCIAL REFORM. 

On June 20, 1837, King William IV. died. He had 
reigfned but a short time. He came to the throne when 
he was already an old man. He had been a sailor, and 
a sailor of the roughest school, and in many of his 
opinions, as, for example, his views on the question of 



1 40 Legal and Sociai Reform. 1^37 

the slave trade and slavery, he ran counter to the 
feeling of the great majority of Englishmen. But on 
the whole he had made a respectable constitutional 
Sovereign, and during the struggles which ended in the 
passing of the Reform Bill he had behaved with fair- 
ness and with prudence. His death was followed by 
the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne. The 
Princess Victoria was his niece. She was the daughter 
of the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III. Wil- 
liam IV. left no child living when he died, and the 
Crown therefore passed over to his niece, Victoria. 

The Queen was born on May 24, 18 19. She was 
therefore little more than eighteen years of age when she 
was thus suddenly called to a throne which, at her birth, 
there could have been little expectation that she would 
ever have to fill. She was named Alexandrina Victoria. 
The name Alexandrina was given to her by her father, 
in compliment to the Emperor of Russia. The intention 
was that she should also bear the name Georgiana, after 
her uncle, George IV., then Prince Regent. The Duke 
of Kent, however, insisted that Alexandrina should be 
her first name, and thereupon the Prince Regent declared 
that the name of Georgiana could not stand second to 
any other in the country, and that therefore she must not 
bear it at all. It was, perhaps, fortunate on the whole 
that, the name of Georgiana was not given to the young 
Princess. Its more recent associations were not of happy 
omen ; to perpetuate them would not have been welcome 
to the country. The Queen had been carefully brought 
up by her mother in almost absolute seclusion. None of 
the statesmen or officials of the time had any close per- 
sonal acquaintance with the young Princess, or any 
reason to feel satisfied with regard to her opinions or her 
capacity. The Duchess of Kent naturally desired seclu- 



1837 "^^^^ Window Tax. 141 

sion for the Princess, because neither at the Court of 
George IV. nor at that of William IV. were the manners 
of society such as to make a careful mother anxious that 
her daughter should see much of Court circles. The 
young Queen surprised everyone almost from the first 
moment when she came into public life by her compo- 
sure, her force of character, and her intelligence. Yet so 
strong was the influence of party spirit, and so high did 
its passions run, that on both sides of the political field 
there were heard wild cries of alarm at the Queen's ac- 
cession. On one side of the field, the clamour was that 
the Tories were trying to bring about a revolution in 
favour of the Hanoverian branch of the Royal Family, 
that they were plotting to depose the Queen and put the 
Duke of Cumberland in her place. On the other side, 
the alarm-cry was that the Queen was sure to favour the 
Roman Catholics, that she would turn Catholic herself, 
or at the very least would marry a Catholic prince. The 
leading paper of that day thought it convenient and be- 
coming to remind the Queen that if she were to turn 
Catholic or to marry a Catholic, she would immediately 
forfeit her crown. The Queen had not been many 
months on the throne when she satisfied every one that 
she was a thoroughly constitutional Sovereign, that she 
was capable of acting with absolute impartiality between 
Liberal and Tory, and that she had full capacity for the 
duties so suddenly imposed on her. In 1840, the Queen 
was married to her cousin. Prince Albert ofSaxe-Coburg- 
Gotha, who afterwards received the title of Prince Con- 
sort. 

One important result of the accession of Queen Vic- 
toria was the severance of the connection between this 
country and the kingdom of Hanover. Hanover had 
become connected with England, because it was ruled by 



1 42 Legal and Social Reform. 1^37 

the Prince who, after the death of Queen Anne, came to 
be Sovereign of this country. But the law of Hanover 
limited the sovereignty to men, and therefore, when 
Queen Victoria succeeded to the throne of England, she 
did not become Queen of Hanover, but Hanover passed 
over to her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, eldest sur- 
viving brother of William IV. It was fortunate for 
England that she was thus disentangled from her connec- 
tion with Hanover. The Hanoverian connection had 
always been distasteful to most people here, and in times 
much more near to our own, England might have been 
involved in war if her Sovereign had still continued to be 
Sovereign of Hanover. The great movement for German 
unity, which went on in later years, would hardly have 
been stayed by the existence of a kingdom of Hanover 
under what would have been practically a foreign Sove- 
reign. England would either have had to face the 
responsibility of maintaining Hanover against Germany 
or the discredit of surrendering it. 

The reforms which were going on satisfactorily under 
a Sovereign so narrow-minded and uncultured as Wil- 
liam IV., were not likely to be stayed in their course or 
to become less substantial in their character under the 
rule of a Queen so intelligent and liberal-minded as 
Victoria, On the contrary, the energy of reform seemed 
to grow in strength and to be guided with increasing 
enlightenment. Apart from purely political questions, 
the great subjects of the reformer's interest when Queen 
Victoria came to the throne were the condition of na- 
tional education, the criminal law, and the system of 
taxation. It seems hard to believe now how stupid and 
barbarous were the principles on which, even up to the 
time of the Queen's accession, and for long after, the 
taxation of the country and its criminal law were carried 



1 832-3 7 Criminal Law Reforms, 1 43 

on. Newspapers were taxed, as if people ought to be 
prevented from reading them ; windows were taxed, as 
if it were the business of the Government to take care 
that men and women did not have too much air and 
sunlight in their houses. The window tax had been in 
existence for centuries, and about this time used to re- 
turn more than a million of money every year to the 
revenue. A house was taxed according to the number 
of its windows, and the result of course was that house- 
holders reduced the number as much as possible, and 
the poorer a man was the greater was the necessity for 
his depriving his family of light and air. A common 
practice was to paint rows of windows on one of the 
solid walls of a house, so that the house might at least 
seem to the hasty passer-by to enjoy that light which 
the rigour of taxation denied it. Twenty years had yet 
to pass away before this odious tax was finally abol- 
ished. 

Soon after the Queen's accession an attempt was made 
to establish something like a system of national educa- 
tion. The first movement that way had been made a 
few years earlier, in 1834. The movement then began 
by a grant of money for the purposes of elementary edu- 
cation. Twenty thousand pounds was the sum first 
given, and the same grant was made each successive 
year until 1839, when Lord John Russell asked for an 
increase of 10,000/., and proposed a change in the way 
of distributing the money. At first the grant was given 
through the National School Society, a body in direct 
connection with the English Church, and the British 
and Foreign School Association, which admitted chil- 
dren of all denominations without imposing on them 
sectarian instruction. Lord John Russell obtained an 
order in council transferring the distribution of the mo- 



1 44 Legal and Social Reform. 1837 

ney to a committee of privy council. The proposals of 
the Government were bitterly opposed in both Houses of 
Parliament. An application of the public money through 
the hands of the committee of the privy council, not in 
any sense under the direct control and authority of the 
State, was denounced as a State endowment of popery 
and heresy. The Government, however, succeeded in 
carrying their point, and established their Committee of 
Privy Council on Education, the institution in whose 
hands the management of the whole system of public 
instruction has rested ever since. 

Some of the most effective and benign measures to 
mitigate the harshness of our criminal legislation were 
taken in this chapter of our history. The Custody of 
Infants Bill was one of the first legislative declarations 
that there is any difference between an English wife and 
a purchased slave woman, so far as the power of the 
master over either is concerned. The Custody of In- 
fants Bill gave to mothers of irreproachable conduct, 
who, from no fault of their own, were living apart from 
their husbands, occasional access to their children, with 
permission and under control of the judges. It seems 
marvellous to us now to think that there ever could 
have been a time when such a measure met with resist- 
ance from rational human beings. Reforms were going 
on year after year in the criminal law. The severity of 
the death punishment was mitigated by successive Acts 
of Parliament. In 1832, capital punishment was abol- 
ished in cases of horse-stealing, sheep-stealing, coining, 
larceny to the value of 5/. in a dwelling-house, and 
other offences. In 1833, house-breaking ceased to be 
a capital crime. In 1834, a m^an who had escaped from ' 
transportation, and come back to this country, was no 
longer liable to the punishment of death. In 1835, letter- 



^1837 Transporfatio7i. 145 

stealing by servants in the Post Office was removed 
from the black list of capital offences, One curious 
result of all these gradual reductions of the death pen- 
alty, has been to establish a much nearer proportion, in 
our days, between the number of persons sentenced to 
death and the number of persons actually executed. 
When the death sentence was made to apply to almost 
every offence that men or women could commit, it was 
impossible, seeing that human nature must then, as 
now, have had some compassion in it, that all these 
/-sentences, or even a considerable portion of them, 
could ever have been carried into effect. For example, 
in 1824, 1,066 persons were sentenced to death, of whom 
only 40 were executed. In the following year, 1,036 were 
sentenced and 50 executed. In 1837, 438 persons were 
sentenced to death, of whom only 8 were executed. But 
if we come down to milder times, we find that in i860, 
48 were sentenced and 12 executed. In 1861, 50 persons 
were sentenced and 15 executed. In the earlier years 
the number of executions is hardly i in 20 to the number 
of sentences, while, in the later years, it is sometimes i 
in 2. The superiority in the policy of our times is not 
merely its being a policy of greater mercy, but also in 
its being a policy of greater efficacy. If the death sen- 
tence is to have any influence at all in deterring from 
crime, its influence must be, in a great degree, by the 
certainty of its infliction. It is obvious, therefore, that a 
sentence of which there are 15 inflictions out of 50 con- 
demnations, must be more effective as a deterrent than 
a sentence which is only inflicted 40 times in 1,066 cases 
of its delivery. The question whether the death penalty 
ought to be inflicted at all, whether its deterring effect 
is really so considerable as to render it worth retaining 
the punishment, is one of great public interest and im- 

L 



146 Legal and Social Reform. 1837 

portance, but into which it is not necessary at present to 
enter. The point on which we desire particularly to 
insist is, that not only have our modern principles miti- 
gated the action of the death penalty, but they have, at 
the same time, so applied it as to render its deterrent 
effect, if it has any, more distinct and operative than it 
could have been in days less humane. 

How to deal with criminals not sentenced to the death 
penalty, or on whose behalf that penalty had been miti- 
gated, was a question which occupied the attention of 
Parliament during many successive years. The system 
of transportation had grown to be an intolerable nui- 
sance to our rising colonies. Transportation, as a sys- 
tematised means of getting some of our criminals out of 
our way, began in the time of Charles II. The judges 
then gave power for the removal of criminals to the 
North American colonies. The colonies, however, as 
they grew into civilisation and strength, began to protest 
against this use being made of their soil, and of course 
the revolt of the North American provinces, and the 
creation of the United States of America, rendered it 
necessary for England to send her convicts to some 
other part of the world. In 1787 a cargo of criminals 
was sent to Botany Bay, on the eastern shore of New 
South Wales. Afterwards, convicts were sent to Van 
Diemen's Land and to Norfolk Island, a solitary island 
in the Pacific, 800 miles, or thereabouts, from the shores 
of New South Wales. Norfolk Island has been de- 
scribed as the penal settlement for the convicted among 
convicts, that is to say, criminals, who having been 
transported to New South Wales committed new crimes 
there, might be selected by the colonial authorities, and 
sent for severer punishment to Norfolk Island. 

There had been growing up in this country an im- 



1837 Transportation. 147 

pression for a long time that the transportation system 
was the parent of intolerable evils. It had been con- 
demned by Romilly and Bentham. In 1837, the House 
of Commons appointed a committee to consider the 
whole question. Amongst others on the committee were 
Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Mr. Charles Buller, 
Sir William Molesworth, and Lord Howick, afterwards 
Earl Grey. The evidence put before that committee 
disclosed a number of horrors which made it certain 
that the transportation system must come to an end. 
Norfolk Island, as we have said, was kept for the con- 
victed among the convicts. A number of men, thorough- 
ly brutalised, were left there to herd together like beasts. 
They worked, when they did work at all, in chains. 
They were roused at daybreak, turned out to labour in 
their chains, and allowed to huddle back to their dens 
when dark had set in. In Sydney, the convicts received, 
after a certain period of probation, a conditional free- 
dom, or what we have lately called a ticket-of-leave. 
They were allowed to work for the colonists. Anyone 
requiring labourers or servants could apply to the au- 
thorities and have male or female convicts assigned to him 
to do his work. These convict labourers and servants 
were hardly better in condition than slaves. They were 
assigned over to masters and mistresses, for whom they 
had to work as ordered, and whose commands, however 
capricious, they had to obey. A special code of laws 
existed for the discipline of these unfortunate creatures. 
They moved about openly in the ordinary life of the 
place, working in trades, acting as domestic servants, 
labouring in the fields. They were living under con- 
ditions unknown to civilised life elsewhere. On the 
complaint of a master or mistress, men could be flogged 
with as many as fifty lashes for ordinary disobedience. 



1 48 Legal and Social Reform. 1 700-1 840 

After a while, of course, they lost all hope of reform, all 
sense of decency. Their lives were alternations of pro- 
fligacy and punishment. The worse a man was, the 
better he was likely to be able to endure such an 
existence. Indeed, a genuine, downright, irreclaimable 
scoundrel often liked well enough the kind of life he 
found in New South Wales. He had ample opportunity 
for profligacy, and as long as he obeyed the immediate 
orders of his master or mistress, he was not likely to be 
flogged. Sometimes the wives of convicts went out to 
the colony, started some business or some farming work 
there, and had their husbands assigned to them as 
servants. It is shown in the evidence that in a certain 
number of instances the women, probably to pay off old 
scores, took occasion now and then to have their hus- 
bands flogged. The publication of the report of the 
committee filled the public mind with so much horror 
that it was evident to all persons that the abandonment 
of transportation was only a question of time. The 
colonists themselves in most places began to interfere 
and to protest against it. At last it came so far that only 
in Western Australia were residents willing to receive 
convicts on any conditions, and Western Australia had 
little opportunity of receiving many of our outcasts. 
The finding of gold in Australia settled at last the 
question of these colonies being made any longer places 
for the shooting of our human rubbish. It would be im- 
possible to send out shiploads of criminals to a region 
full of the temptations of gold. Various projects were 
formed of starting convict settlements in other places, 
but in every case some clear objection arose, and 
although for many years after, committees of both 
Houses of Parliament reported in favour of some sort of 
transportation system, they also recorded their conviction 



1829 The Police Fo7'ce. 149 

that it would be impossible to carry on the existing sys- 
tem any longer. Its death sentence was passed when 
the report of the commission was published. 

It would not be right, ijn surveying the political and 
social improvements which belong to this period, not to 
speak of the great advantage secured for peace and order 
in towns and cities, and indeed everywhere over the 
country, by the organization and development of the 
police system. The London police force, remodelled by 
Sir Robert Peel, and constructed very much as we now 
know it, began its duty about the time when this history 
opens. Before that time there had only been a miserably 
inefficient watch system, the sport of satirists, and not at 
all the terror of evil-doers. The Metropolitan organiza- 
tion became the model for the police force of all the 
great towns of England and Scotland, and for the capital 
of Ireland. But the police force of Ireland in general is 
a semi-military body, embodied to deal with a condition 
of things entirely different from that which exists in 
England. 

A few words may be given to the small but very im- 
portant reform effected in the interests of humanity by the 
suppression of the practice of sending boys up chimneys 
to clean them. The trade of the chimney-sweep pursued 
in this way was unknown, we believe, to any country ex- 
cept in England. It began in England about the begin- 
ning of that eighteenth century whose ways have lately 
occupied so much of our attention, and called forth so 
many more or less unsuccessful attempts at imitation. 
Most of the chimneys of the English houses were narrow 
and crooked, and it was for a long time held as an article 
of faith that there was no efficient way of cleansing them 
except by sending a poor boy to climb from the fireplace 
to the top of the chimney, and proclaim that he had 



150 Legal and Social Reform. 1835 

accomplished his task by crying " sweep," when his soot- 
covered head and shoulders emerged into the open air. 
Nothing could have been more brutal than the treatment 
of these poor climbing boys. Their hands, arms and 
knees were abrased and injured by the constant friction 
against the walls of the chimney. It sometimes happened 
that the boy was sent up before the chimney had had 
time to cool after the extinction of the fire, and then the 
poor creature ran the risk of being severely burnt. 
Sometimes he was severely burnt. Frequently the chim- 
ney was narrow and the child stuck fast in it, and was 
only rescued with much trouble. In certain cases the 
boy when taken out was found to be dead. Most people 
had grown so familiarised with this abominable habit that 
it never occurred to them to think of the suffering of 
the poor creatures whom they saw sent up into their 
chimneys — sometimes forced to go up by threats and 
blows from the master sweep. At last, however, humane 
persons began to call attention to the evil, and then an 
agitation set in against it. Evidence was brought before 
the public to show that in some cases where a boy had 
stuck fast, the master sweep insisted that he was lazy 
and perverse, and lit a fire in the grate in order to force 
the poor creature to climb. It was shown that in several 
instances the master sweeps had employed little girls 
where they could not easily g6t boys, and it was stated 
in Liverpool that a case was discovered in which a master 
sweep for many years employed his wife, a young and 
small woman, to do the work of a climbing boy. The 
barbarous practice was suppressed by legislation in 1840, 
but for a considerable time after its legal suppression it 
continued to be secretly practised, in some places prac- 
tised with almost no pretence of secrecy. Finally, public 
opinion became thoroughly awakened to the horrors of 



1 835 ^^^ Press- Gang. 151 

the whole system, and the practice of using climbing 
boys fell into absolute disuse. Chimneys now are built 
to suit a rational and humane system, and the sweeping 
machines have been found to do their work far better 
than even the most patient and energetic poor little boy 
who ever was victimized in the early days. 

Among the earlier reforms of this period we must not 
omit to mention one which abolished a great grievance 
that had long supplied themes for the romancist, the 
poet, and the painter, and even still continues occasion- 
ally to supply them. This was the abolition of the law 
of impressment for the navy. The law of impressment, 
rather indeed a custom than a law, was of the most 
ancient practice. In the days of Richard II. it was spoken 
of as a system long in existence and well known. It was, 
however, regulated by a great variety of Acts of Parlia- 
ment in various times, but by no possible regulation 
could it be anything except a monstrous grievance. From 
Richard II. 's time, through Philip and Mary, Elizabeth, 
William III., Anne, George II. and George III., Acts of 
Parliament had been passed for its regulation and re- 
striction. The principle simply was that when the 
Government required seamen to carry on a war, they 
would take them where they could get them. The sea- 
port towns were of course the place where they sought 
them, and sailors in the merchant marine were the men 
preferred for service on board ship. Our literature is full 
of pathetic stories of young seamen pressed as they were 
returning from the church where they had been married, 
and carried off to serve the Sovereign on the seas, per- 
haps not to return during many long years, perhaps not 
to return at all. There is, we believe, at least one true 
story of a seaman who was thus carried off after his 
wedding, who served all through the long stretch of the 



152 L egal and Social Reform . ^ S 3 9 

war between France and England, and who returned a 
raan of more than middle age, to find his wife long since 
dead, and himself a forgotten stranger in the home of his 
youth. Sometimes the carrying out of the impressment 
service led to serious riots. In Captain Marryat's once 
popular novels there are given descriptions, which we 
doubt not are true in the main, of the difficulties which 
attended sometimes the capture of seamen for His 
Majesty's fleet. We read of serious resistance offered in 
some of the lower quarters of Portsmouth, and of the 
women joining in the fray, and seamen being dangerously 
wounded, of shots fired from windows, of a stubborn 
resistance made from room to room, and at last of the 
objects of the search being captured and carried off 
much as the remnants of a stubborn garrison might be 
taken by storm. Many anti-reformers of that time 
thought, as anti-reformers have always done when any 
improvement is proposed, that it would be utterly impos- 
sible to carry on the service if the power to impress sea- 
men was not allowed to remain in the hands of the 
authorities. The press-gang was, however, abolished by 
a Bill which the Government brought in in 1835, and 
which limited compulsory service to five years in the 
navy. Since that time Governments have again and 
again been occupied in the consideration of measures to 
supply the navy with a sufficient stock of seamen, and 
also to maintain a good naval reserve. The first step, 
hov/ever, to maintaining a really respectable body of men 
in the service, was taken when the Government abolished 
the press-gang. So long as that system existed it was 
not practically possible to do away with the flogging 
discipline. The men who were snatched up and pressed 
for service on board ship were not likely at first to settle 
down quietly to all the proper discipline and organization 



1S39 Postal Reform. 153 

of the navy. Sometimes the press-gang carried off men 
who were but the scum of the seaport towns, hardly- 
better than the gaol-bird class. One or two of these men 
impregnated with his bad habits half a forecastle full of 
sailors, and it is fairly to be acknowledged that very 
stringent measures of discipline were sometimes required 
to keep such persons in order. The abolition of the 
press-gang system rendered possible the abolition of 
flogging, and one can hardly believe that there can be 
any serious difficulty, by wise and liberal measures on 
the part of the Government, to maintain an excellent 
naval reserve, and to induce a good class of men to 
enter that naval service which has been always so es- 
pecially popular among the English people. 

One of the greatest social reforms accomplished 
during all this time was the change in the postal system. 
For a long succession of years the charge for the delivery 
of letters through the post had amounted to a practical 
exclusion of all the poorer classes from its substantial 
benefits. The rates of postage had been high and varied. 
They varied with regard to distance and with regard to 
the weight and even the size or shape of a letter. There 
was a London district post which was a distinct branch 
of the whole department, and with a different scale for 
the transmission of letters. The average charge on every 
letter throughout the kingdom was a little more than (id, 
A letter from London to Brighton cost 8^., from London 
to Aberdeen i^. ^d., from London to Belfast \s. \d. As 
if this tax was not enough, there was an arrangement 
that if the letter included more than one sheet of paper it 
should, no matter what its weight, come under a higher 
rate of charge. Members of Parliament could send 
letters free through the post to a certain extent ; members 
of the Government could send them throu<rh without 



1 54 Legal and Social Reform, 1837 

limit. The country has now almost forgotten the frank- 
ing system. Few people remember the time when the 
name of a Member of Parliament scrawled upon the 
outside of a letter sent it free through the post. It was 
not alone the member's own letter or letters which thus 
went free. Any letter which he endorsed with his name 
was entitled to the same privilege. In other words, people 
who could best afford to pay for their letters sent them 
without charge, and those who could least afford to pay 
anything had to pay a double rate, that is, to pay for the 
transmission of their own letters and to make good the 
deficiency in the postal revenue caused by the privilege 
conferred upon the class who would send their letters free 
of charge. In the years between 181 5, that is, imme- 
diately after the close of the great war, and 1835, ^^ 
population of this country had increased 30 per cent. 
The stage-coach duty has increased 128 per cent. In 
other words, the population has increased by nearly a 
third, and the amount of travelling done by stage-coach 
had more than doubled itself. All this time the revenue 
of the Post Office had remained stationary. In most 
other countries, if not in all, the postal revenue had been 
steadily increasing. In the United States the postal 
revenue had trebled itself, although the American 
system of posting was full of inconveniences and defects, 
which might themselves have been thought sufficient to 
prevent a great increase in the transmission of letters. 

The extravagant system prevailing in England did 
not merely .interfere with the correspondence of the 
public. It did that which all other unreasonable re- 
strictions have the effect of doing, it created illicit 
organisations for the purpose of defeating the law. 
Enterprises for the transmission of letters privately, at 
lower rates than those charged by the government, 



I79S~^^79 Rowland Hill. 155 

sprang up everywhere. It is said that the owners of 
almost every kind of pubhc conveyance were concerned 
in this traffic. Five out of every six of all the letters 
that passed between London and Manchester were 
believed to have been carried for many years by this 
unlawful process. Some great commercial firms sent 
fifty letters by this secret means of despatch for every 
one on which they paid the Government tax. The 
system was inquisitorial in its operation. An additional 
tax was laid on where a letter was written on more 
sheets of paper than one, and the post office officials 
kept up a frequent tampering with the seals of letters in 
order to find out whether or not they ought to be charged 
according to the higher rate. Mr. Hill, afterwards Sir 
Rowland Hill, is the man to whom we all owe the. adop- 
tion of that uniform system which since his time has 
been adopted by every civilised state. A remarkable 
member of a remarkable family, Mr. Hill inherited 
social reform from his ancestors, and breathed in its 
spirit from the atmosphere around him. A story which 
Coleridge used to tell, called his attention to the un- 
reasonableness of the post office system. Coleridge 
once, in the lake district, saw a postman deliver a letter 
to a woman at a cottage door. The woman looked at 
it but handed it back, declining to pay the postage, 
which was a shilliing. Coleridge heard her say that the 
letter was from her brother. He paid the shilling for 
her, in spite of a certain demonstration of objection on 
her part. When the postman had gone she explained 
to Coleridge that he had wasted a shilling. There was 
nothing in the letter. Her brother and she had agreed 
long before that while all was well with him he was to 
send a blank sheet once a quarter, and she thus had 
news of him without paying the postage. This at once 



156 L egal and Social Reform . 1 8 40 

struck Mr. Rowland Hill as a proof that there must be 
something fundamentally wrong in the system which 
drove a brother and sister to cheat the revenue, in order 
to gratify the reasonable desire to hear of each other's 
welfare. He set himself at once to work out a compre- 
hensive plan of reform, which he laid before the world 
early in 1837. The essence of his plan lay in the prin- 
ciple that the cost of the conveyance of letters through 
the post was but trifling, and was but little increased by 
the distance over which they had to be conveyed. His 
idea was that the rates of postage should be reduced to 
the minimum, that the speed of conveyance should be 
increased, that there should be a greater frequency of 
despatch, and that there should be a uniform charge for 
the whole of the United Kingdom. The strongest oppo- 
sition, both official and otherwise, was made to this 
scheme. The Postmaster-General, Lord Lichfield, de- 
clared it the wildest and most extravagant project he 
had ever heard of. He said the mails would be unable 
to carry the letters, that the walls of the post office would 
burst, and that the whole area on which the building 
stood would not contain the clerks and the letters. 
This, one would think, was the most unlucky argument 
against such a scheme. In order to show that Mr. Hill's 
plan ought not to be adopted, Lord Lichfield contended 
that the public would rush eagerly to avail themselves 
of its advantages. Not only officials opposed it. Even 
Sydney Smith declared it a nonsensical scheme. 

Mr. Hill, however, persevered, and raised a great 
amount of public opinion in his favour. His plan was 
referred to a commission, who were engaged in inquir- 
ing into the whole conduct of the post office department, 
and they reported in its favour, although there was a 
general impression that it must involve a considerable 



I S 3 9-40 The Postal Bill. 157 

loss of revenue. Mr. Hill's idea was that one penny the 
half-ounce should be the limit of charge within the 
United Kingdom. The Government took up the scheme 
at last and determined to run the risk. The commer- 
cial community of the great towns generally had been 
naturally much attracted towards the project. The 
Government determined to bring in a Bill to provide 
for the introduction of the scheme at once, and to abol- 
ish the franking system, except in the case of official 
letters sent on business belonging directly to Her 
Majesty's service. The proposal of the Government 
was that the rate of postage should be 4^. for each letter 
under half-an-ounce in weight, anywhere within the 
limits of the United Kingdom, but that this was to be 
only a beginning, for with the opening of January,. 1840, 
the postage was to be a uniform rate of one penny per 
letter not beyond half-an-ounce in weight. 

The introductory measure was passed in both Houses 
of Parliament. The Duke of Wellington declared that 
he strongly objected to it, but that as the Government 
evidently were determined to have it, he did not like to 
recommend the House of Lords to offer it any strong 
opposition. In the Commons Sir Robert Peel opposed 
it, and declared that it must involve the country in an 
immense loss of revenue. It was, however, passed into 
law. We need hardly say that it has not involved a loss 
of revenue, but that on the contrary the post office has 
been the best paying department under the whole charge 
of the Government since that time. In the last year of 
the heavy postage, 1839, ^^ number of letters delivered 
in England and Ireland was rather more than eighty-two 
millions, five millions and a half as franked letters which 
returned nothing to the revenues of the State. In 1875 
the delivery in the United Kingdom amounted to more 



158 L egal and Social Reform, 1 8 40 

than one thousand millions of letters. During that time, 
it is necessary to observe, the population has not nearly 
doubled itself. The population has not doubled, while the 
increase in the delivery of letters is as twelve to one. 
Every other civilised country has since adopted this sys- 
tem, and at the present time a letter is carried from Lon- 
don to San Francisco at a rate less than one-third of the 
cost of sending a letter from London to Brighton under 
the old system. Almost all the countries of the world 
have since come into an international postal system, by 
virtue of which a letter can be sent almost anywhere 
over Europe and all through the American States for 'i\d. 
There can be little doubt that fresh reductions will go on 
in this direction, and that probably before long the average 
penny will take a letter from London to Toronto or to 
Chicago as it takes it now from London to Dublin. The 
post-card system, first adopted in this country, has been 
a still further development of the same principle. We 
are, however, now anticipating by some years the limit 
which we have laid down for ourselves in describing this 
epoch of reform. But the change in the postal system 
may be said to have been accomplished in its entirety by 
the Act which came into force in 1840. The change 
from the fluctuating and extravagant scale to the uniform 
penny in this kingdom was the foundation and origin of 
all the reform that has since taken place. That once 
accomplished the rest followed. 

It seems almost superfluous to point out that the new 
postal system could hardly have been developed to any 
considerable extent if it had not been for the sudden 
growth of the railway system throughout the country. 
The railway locomotive had been in use for some years 
before Rowland Hill made his first effort at postal re- 
form. The railway had its beginning not in an attempt 



1 781-1848 George Stephenson, 1^9 

to make public locomotion more quick and easy, but in 
the humbler and narrower purpose of facilitating the 
carrying of loads in collieries and other mines. These, 
however, were not steam railways ; they were something 
like the tram-ways of our own days. There are disputes 
as to the first inventor of the steam locomotive, just as 
there are disputes about the original authorship of the 
idea of a penny post, It is certain that George Ste- 
phenson was not the first man who got into his mind the 
idea of a steam locomotive ; it is quite possible that 
some other man, that many other men, may have 
thought of the uniform penny postal system before Row- 
land Hill. But in dealing with the history of any dis- 
covery or invention we must take as the author of a sys- 
tem the man who, not content with conceiving the idea 
of it, was able to show how that idea could be carried 
into effect, and who actually succeeded in making it a 
reality. There is nothing ungenerous or unreasonable 
in this. Hundreds of chance travellers may have talk- 
ed of the possibility of piercing Mont Cenis in order to 
make a railway tunnel under it ; the world must regard 
the man who put the idea into practical shape, and saw 
that it was made a working reality, as the author of the 
scheme for tunnelling the Alps, In the same way Row- 
land Hill and George Stephenson will always and justly 
be looked up to as the originators of the railway system 
and the cheap postal system. George Stephenson was 
the son of a fireman in a Northumberland colliery, and 
began life himself as an assistant fireman. Such edu- 
cation as he had he got at a night-school. He showed 
from his childhood a genius for mechanics and inven- 
tions. He constructed his first locomotive engine in 
1814: an engine which drew eight cars at the modest 
rate of four miles an hour. A railway of his construe- 



1 60 Legal and Social Reform. 1 830 

tion was opened between Stockton and Darlington in 
1825, the first railway made for public use. Stephenson 
was chief engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester 
Railway, which was opened in 1830. The directors of 
the railway offered a prize of 500/. for the construction 
of the best locomotive, and the prize was won by George 
Stephenson. His engine was called the " Rocket," and 
ran at the rate of about thirty miles an hour. Stephen- 
son's invention was met by every kind of objection, by 
ridicule, by grave argument, by the criticism of men who 
professed to be above all things practical, and by the 
alarmist views of men who knew nothing about the sub- 
ject. The opening of the line between Manchester nd 
Liverpool in 1830, was made memorable by the death of 
Mr. Huskisson, an eminent English statesman. Hus- 
kisson had been in the Cabinet of the Duke of Welling- 
ton, had quarreled with his leader and had resigned. 
They met again for the first time at one of the stations 
near Liverpool, on the occasion of the opening of this 
line of railway. The train stopped, and many of its 
passengers got out of the carriage and walked on the 
platform. Huskisson saw the Duke of Wellington, and 
the Duke of Wellington made a movement towards him. 
Huskisson hurried to respond to the apparent invitation, 
and in endeavouring to reach the Duke, was struck by 
the moving train and killed. 

Nothing can be more remarkable than the change 
which the railway brought about in the conditions of 
travel. No change made since men began to travel 
down to the invention of the railway was of any marked 
importance. An Englishman travelling from London 
to Rome during the early part of the reign of King Wil- 
liam IV., would have travelled exactly as one of the Ro- 
man generals would have done who left England for 



1837 "^^^ Electric Telegraph. 161 

Rome in the days of the Caesars. In each case the 
traveller would have had all the speed that horses and 
sails could give and no more. A traveller in Victoria's 
reign is borne with a speed which to our ancestors would 
have seemed like that of the wind, and by means of an 
agency which during long centuries had never occurred 
to the imagination even of enthusiasts and dreamers as 
a possible means of locomotion. 

Still more marvellous than the railway is the electric 
telegraph. The authorship of this wonderful discovery 
and application is, like that of the railway and the postal 
system, still in dispute. In 1837 a patent was taken out 
by two Englishmen, Professor Wheatstone and Mr. 
Cooke, for a plan of transmitting messages by means of 
an electric current sent along a wire. In the very same 
year Professor Morse, an American electrician, made 
application to the Congress of his country for some aid 
towards the construction of a telegraph of a similar kind, 
and he was refused. He sought to take out a patent in 
England the year after, but he had come too late. 
Wheatstone and Cooke had been beforehand with him. 
It is likely enough that the same idea may have occurred 
to other men before Wheatstone or Cooke or Morse ; 
but we must regard Wheatstone and Cooke as practi- 
cally the authors of that marvellous system of communi- 
cation which sends words over far distances almost as- 
quickly as man's thoughts can traverse them ; which has 
grown from a local into a national and from a national 
into an international system ; which brings London and 
Edinburgh closer for the interchange of message than 
the east and west ends of Fleet Street were fifty years ago, 
and lately has brought London and San Francisco, 
London and Melbourne, London and Calcutta, as close 
together as London and Edinburgh. 

M 



1 62 The Stockdale Case. — Irish Education. 1837 
CHAPTER XI. 

THE STOCKDALE CASE.— IRISH EDUCATION. 

The famous trial of Stockdale v. Hansard raised a 
very important point of law, which, however, it did not 
conclusively settle. It brought up the question how far 
the protection of the House of Commons will extend to 
secure immunity against libel for a publisher. At one 
time the case not only occupied the most serious atten- 
tion of the House of Commons and of the country, but 
threatened to bring the Commons into something like 
permanent antagonism with the Courts of Law. Parlia- 
ment had passed a Bill appointing inspectors of prisons, 
and these inspectors were desired to report annually on 
the condition of each prison which they visited. In their 
first report they mentioned that they had found in New- 
gate a book published by the Messrs. Stockdale, which 
they considered to be indecent and obscene. The opinion 
of the inspectors was published in the ordinary Parlia- 
mentary reports which Messrs. Hansard issued. We 
need not discuss the merits of the publication itself. It 
seems to have been a book on a subject very proper and 
necessary for the study of medical men and medical 
students, but which had no particular business amongst 
the literature furnished in prisons. Stockdale brought 
an action against Hansard for publishing the report, and 
insisted that the publication was libel, Hansard pleaded 
that the publication was privileged and that the state- 
ment was true. The case came before Lord Denman, 
Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in February, 1837. 
The jury found the libel justified by the character ^of the 



1837 Stockdale Hansard. 163 

work itself, and therefore brought in a verdict for the 
defendant on the second issue which he had raised. 
This way of dealing with the question got rid of the 
difficult point as to privilege, so far as the jury were con- 
cerned. The Chief Justice, however, himself called atten- 
tion to that issue, and declared that whatever arrange- 
ment the House of Commons might make with any 
publishers, anyone who published a statement which 
might be injurious or ruinous to one of His Majesty's 
subjects, " must answer in a court of justice to that subject 
if he challenges him for that libel.'' The House of Com- 
mons could not sit down quietly under such a ruling as 
this. On the motion of Lord John Russell, it resolved 
" that the power of publishing all such reports, visits, and 
proceedings, shall be necessary as an essential incident 
to the constitutional functions of Parliament ; that by the 
law and privilege of Parliament the House of Commons 
has the sole and exclusive jurisdiction as to the existence 
and extent of its privileges, and that for any court or 
tribunal to decide upon matters of privilege, inconsistent 
with the determination of either House of Parliament, is 
a breach and contempt of the privileges of Parliament." 
Stockdale was not disturbed by this resolution. He 
bought a second copy of the report of the prison inspec- 
tors, and brought a second action against the publisher. 
The Attorney-General was directed to put a plea on re- 
cord that Hansard had acted by the order of the House 
of Commons. The four judges of the Court of Queens 
Bench unanimously decided against the plea, and 
Stockdale's damages were set down at a hundred pounds. 
The House of Commons referred the matter again to a 
committee. The m.ajority of members of Parliament 
thought the time had come for asserting the privileges of 
the House, but Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel and 



1 64 The Stockdale Case. — Irish Education. 1837-39 

others, were inclined to get out of the dispute by yield- 
ing to the Law Courts. By a small majority, 184 votes 
to 166, the House agreed to a motion proposed by Lord 
John Russell and supported by Sir Robert Peel, pro- 
mising to take proceedings for the purpose of staying 
the execution of judgment. Stockdale, however, was 
not content with his victory, but in 1839 ^^ went to 
Hansard's once more, bought a third copy of the Prisons 
Report, and brought a third action against the pub- 
lishers. He was awarded 600/. damages and 40/. costs. 
The Sheriffs of London were called upon to seize and 
sell some of the property of the Hansards to satisfy the 
demands of the plaintiff. The money was paid into the 
Sheriffs' Court under protest, in order to avoid the 
scandal of a sale. The House of Commons ordered the 
Sheriffs to refund the money to the Hansards. The 
Court of Queen's Bench was applied to for an order 
directing them to pay the money over to Stockdale. The 
Sheriffs were finally committed to the custody of the 
Serjeant-at-Arms, for contempt of the House of Com- 
mons. The Court of Queen's Bench at once served a 
vfnX. oi habeas corpus, calling upon him to release the 
Sheriffs. The House directed the Serjeant-at-Arms to 
inform the Court that he held the Sheriffs in custody by 
order of the Commons. ' The Serjeant-at-Arms con- 
ducted the Sheriffs to the Court of Queen's Bench and 
made his explanation there. The explanation was de- 
clared reasonable, and he was allowed to conduct his 
prisoners back again. The whole affair was becoming 
ridiculous and humiliating. Not only did Stockdale 
persevere with his actions, but numbers of other men, 
fired by his example, continued to bring actions for 
publications reflecting on them and contained in 
official reports to the House of Commons. The public 



^^37~39 Lord Denman* s Ruling. 165 

in general sided with the Sheriffs and the Judges, 
and against the authority of the House of Commons. 
It must have been, one would think, owing in a great 
measure to the defects of the Ministry itself, that 
popular feeling went so much against them. The 
House of Commons must have fallen strangely into dis- 
repute when outsiders could regard its action in this 
case, and even the principle on which its actions rested 
as the overbearing conduct of a despotic House endea- 
vouring to crush a few humble men. But the question 
which the House of Commons sustained is, to us, one of 
great importance. The view of the law on which Lord 
Denman rested his ruling, was that Parliament has 
power to protect any publications, but that the House of 
Commons is not Parliament ; is only one of the ^states 
of the realm ; and therefore is not authorised to sanction 
the publications of libels and to protect those who pub- 
lished them against the Courts of Law. But it seems 
clear that to secure to each House of Parliament an 
absolute authority and freedom of publication is of the 
utmost importance to the least protected classes of the 
community. No harm that could possibly come from 
the undue exercise of such a privilege could be compared 
to the evils which must arise from any restriction of the 
rights of either House to publish whatever it thought 
proper for the common good. Reform of any kind is 
only obtained through freedom of debate and through 
that publicity which freedom of debate secures. It would 
not be of much avail to allow the utmost liberty of dis- 
cussion in Parliament, as was done at all times, if the 
publication of the debates were restricted, and thus the 
sentiment of the country were never to be fully reached. 
The poorer or humbler a man or a class may be, the 
greater need is there for him to insist on full freedom 



1 66 The Stockdale Case. — Irish Education. 1840 

of publication by either House in Parliament. The abo- 
lition of slavery, the protection of factory children, the 
putting down of the system which employed boys to 
climb chimneys, the repression of the practice which 
sent sailors to sea in vessels no better than rotten coffins, 
all these are reforms which never could have been carried 
but through the influence of public opinion, aroused by 
the publication of debates and reacting on each House of 
Parliament. 

In the end the controversy was closed by a Bill 
brought in by Lord John Russell on March 3, 1840, to 
afford protection to all persons employed in the publica- 
tion of Parliamentary papers. This Bill proposed that any 
person against whom civil or criminal proceedings should 
be taken on account of any such publication might bring 
before the Court a certificate under the hand of the Lord 
Chancellor or the Speaker, stating that it was published 
by the authority of the House, and that the proceedings 
should at once be stayed. This Bill, though it was 
strongly opposed by lawyers in both Houses, was passed 
quietly through, and became law on April 14. It settled 
the question in a practical and simple way for the time, 
but it did not define the relative rights of Parliament and 
the Courts of Law. Since then, however, these rights 
have practically defined themselves. It is now regarded 
as settled that either House of Parliament may authorise 
the publication in print of any document which it con- 
siders necessary, and there will be no Stockdales found 
in our days rash enough to attempt to found legal pro- 
ceedings on such a charge. If any difficulty were again 
to arise, it would then assuredly be necessary to define 
and secure the privilege of either House of Parliament. 
The difficulty, however, will in all probability not arise, 
and the question may be regarded as at an end. 



1845 "^^^^ Queeji' s Colleges. 167 

The Government made an attempt in 1865 to supply 
the defects of middle class education in Ireland. They 
started the scheme of the Queen's Colleges. The idea 
was to establish in Ireland three colleges for the purpose 
of diffusing higher education among the middle and 
upper classes, and indeed among all classes, high and 
low, who felt inclined to avail themselves of the institu- 
tions. The principle on which these colleges were to 
be conducted was that of a mixed education. They 
were to be open to all sects without distinction. Their 
honours, their offices, everything, were to be free of 
religious test. On the other hand religious teaching of 
any kind was to be excluded from them. They were to 
be secular in the strictest sense. One college was to be 
in Cork, one in Belfast, and one in Galway, and the 
whole were to be affiliated to an institution called the 
Queen's University, having an examining but no teach- 
ing power. At that time there was in Ireland only one 
University. That was the University of Dublin, with its 
one college. Trinity, the college being in many respects 
hardly distinguishable from the University. Trinity 
College, Dublin, had grown to be an essentially Protes- 
tant institution. It did indeed receive and educate 
Catholic young men, but it gave them none of its 
honours, and they could take part in none of its official 
work. Therefore, although young Catholics did resort to 
Trinity for the sake of education, it may be said that the 
Catholic body generally felt themselves shut out from its 
advantages. They were at all events at a very painful 
disadvantage. The Catholic young man, educated side 
by side with the Protestant in Trinity, was handicapped 
cruelly in his studies by the knowledge that he could 
not compete with his fellow students for any of the 
honours or rewards which the institution gave to mem- 



1 68 The Stockdale Case. — Irish Education. 1845 

bers of the Established Church. It was to supply this 
very obvious defect, to get rid of this really national 
grievance, that Sir Robert Peel, now in power, devised 
the plan of the Queen's Colleges and Queen's University 
in Ireland. Almost immediately on the scheme being 
laid before the House of Commons, Sir Robert H. Inglis, 
whom we have already mentioned in these pages, a Tory 
of a school now passing quite away denounced the 
scheme and branded the institutions by a name which 
has clung to them ever since, that of the "godless col- 
leges." It afterwards came to be a common impression 
that O'Connell was the man who stigmatised the colleges 
with this name. Sir Robert Inglis, however, was the 
inventor of the epithet. O'Connell afterwards adopted 
it and gave it wider significance and popularity. Sir 
Robert Peel's scheme brought him into direct opposition 
with two great sections of the community, themselves 
reciprocally antagonistic. The Protestants of the ex- 
tremer order, and most of the Roman Catholics, joined in 
condemnation of a system which proposed to omit re- 
ligious teaching from national education. The colleges 
were, however, founded, built, and carried on. Staffs of 
teachers and professors were appointed. For a while it 
seemed probable that the institutions would really 
prosper and be popular. But after a time the heads of 
the Roman Catholic Church met in synod and condemned 
the principle of the institutions in the same sense that 
Sir Robert Inglis had condemned it, and from that time 
they may be said to have languished in Ireland. They 
turned out some very successful scholars, not only 
Protestants, but Catholics, and it is not unworthy of re- 
ma,rk that some of their most successful students have 
been most prominent in the attacks on the principle 
which was the central point of their existence. But the 



1845 "^^^^ Maynooth Grant. 169 

difficulty of education, that is to say, of a Government 
system of education, in a country like Ireland, was not 
to be solved by such a scheme as that of Sir Robert Peel. 
Looking at it with impartial eye, and removing oneself as 
far as possible from the mere sectarian's point of view, we 
cannot deny that the difficulty raised by the Roman 
Catholics is one of serious importance. It seems at the 
first glance a satisfactory and safe concession to freedom 
of religion if the State founds an institution which shall 
teach all classes and sects alike, independent of any 
religious test and free from the possibility of religious 
controversy. But then this can only be had under ordi- 
nary conditions by the virtual exclusion of religious 
teaching from the institution altogether. Here, then, is 
aroused the conscientious objection of those who declare 
that they would rather have no teaching at all than a 
mere secular teaching from which religious questions are 
excluded. Here the Protestants, or a large body of them, 
and the Roman Catholics joined hands. It seems clear 
that there is not a genuine religious equality in the 
system which offers education of a purely secular kind, 
alike to those who conscientiously approve of such a 
system of instruction and those who conscientiously dis- 
approve of it. Successive Governments have been en- 
gaged in attempts to reconcile the system founded by 
Sir Robert Peel with the scruples of the Irish Roman 
Catholic population, and up to this time they have not 
succeeded. The importance to us in considering Peel's 
scheme is that it was at all events the first distinct ad- 
mission on the part of the English Government that the 
Irish Roman Catholics were unjustly treated by the 
system which left to Ireland only one great University, 
and that of a distinctly Protestant character. 

The debates which took place on the proposal to 
establish the Queen's Colleges were animated and in- 



170 The Stockdale Case. — Irish Education. 1845 

teresting. Mr. Gladstone supported Sir Robert Peel 
both by voice and by votes, but he resigned his office in 
the Government shortly after, because of another at- 
tempt made by Sir Robert Peel to conciliate the Roman 
Catholics. This was the increase of the grant to the 
Roman Catholic college of Maynooth in Ireland, a 
college specially founded for the education of young men 
who desire to enter the ranks of the priesthood. Sir 
Robert Peel was not the first to propose the grant. From 
a time preceding the Act of Union a grant of some kind 
had been made to Maynooth. Sir Robert Peel merely 
proposed to make that sufficient which was then insuffi- 
cient, to allow such a sum as might enable the authorities 
of the college to keep it in repair and to accomplish the 
purpose for which it was intended. The proposal of the 
Ministry created a fierce outcry all over the country. 
There was really no question of principle whatever in- 
volved. As Macaulay put it, there was no more princi- 
ple at issue than there would be in the sacrifice of a 
pound instead of a penny weight on some particular 
altar. Nearly half Peel's party in the House of Com- 
mons voted against his scheme on the second reading, 
and Mr. Gladstone, then Vice-President of the Board of 
Trade, resigned his place rather than support the 
measure. He had written a book on the relations of 
Church and State, and he declared that he did not think 
the views he had expressed in that work allowed him to 
take any part in Sir Robert Peel's proposal for increas- 
ing the Maynooth grant. The measure was carried, but 
it bequeathed a controversy which raged furious and 
constant through the House of Commons and through 
the country for some five-and-twenty years after. When 
the Maynooth grant was finally abolished, it was 
abolished in a way which would little have satisfied 



1845 Irish Education. 171 

those who opposed it. It came to an end as a necessary 
consequence of the measure by which Mr. Gladstone 
abohshed his State Church in Ireland. 

The scheme of the Government for elementary educa- 
tion in Ireland had to contend against difficulties of a 
similar kind. For a long time the public teaching, such as 
it was, in Ireland had been conducted on the principle of 
what Mr.Walpole in his " History of England" describes 
very correctly as "protection in religion." The whole idea 
of public instruction for the Irish people was founded on 
the hope of its gradually and insensibly converting the 
populations to the Established Church. The idea was 
akin to that which commonly inspires a Government deal- 
ing with an alien race — the idea of gradually substituting 
the language of the conquerors for the language of the 
conquered. This latter difficulty, curiously enough, was 
one which never really came in the way of English rule 
in Ireland. No resistance was made to the substitution 
of the English language for the Irish. The change cp.me 
about insensibly, without deliberate effort, and without 
any manner of serious objection. Charles Lever, the 
Irish novelist, has made a Greek girl in one of his stories 
express her wonder that the Irish people, even while 
striving to resist English ascendency, should yet make 
their speeches and sing their songs in the English 
language. No Greek, she says, would consent to speak at 
home in the tongue of the Turk. But the difficulty which 
did not exist in the matter of language, was thought by 
many statesmen easytogetoverin the matter of religion. 
The true way, they thought, to make the Irish thoroughly 
loyal, was to gradually educate the Irish children in the 
tenets of the Protestant Church. It was for a long time 
forbidden by penal laws to any Irishman, a Roman 
Catholic, to avail himself of the services of a Catholic 



172 The Stockdale Case. — L'ish Education. 1845 

priest or a Catholic tutor for his children. The poorer 
classes either had to give up all idea of education for 
their children, or to send them to be taught in the Pro- 
testant Charter Schools. The Charter Schools were an 
entire failure. Howard, the great prison reformer, drew 
attention to some of the abuses in their administration, 
and early in the century, Royal commissions were 
appointed to inquire into that subject, and into the whole 
question of Irish education. In 1827 the information 
collected by these commissions was referred to a select 
committee. The select committee accepted in principle 
the recommendation of each commission. Each alike 
had laid it down as a principle that the instruction of the 
Irish people should not be joined with any attempt to 
influence the religious faith of any class of Christians. 
The select committee accepted the principle, an d declared 
it to be of the utmost importance to bring the children of 
the different faiths together, so as to give them a com- 
mon education on general subjects, and to leave them to 
be taught their religious faith under a separate system 
and under the control of their own guardians and 
ministers. In 1830 the committee on the condition of 
the Irish poor brought forward again the suggestion of 
the select committee on Irish education, and recom- 
mended its adoption in practice. It was then at last 
admitted, both by legislation and by public opinion, that 
the idea of converting the Irish, by forcing them to pass 
through Protestant Charter Schools, was a failure. 
Lord Stanley, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, had the 
task of introducing the first comprehensive Education 
Bill. This Bill proposed to establish a Board of National 
Education in Dublin, to be composed of Roman Catholic 
as well as Protestant members, and to have the control 
and direction of all the national schools, as they were 



1845 '^^^ Irish Education Board. 173 

called, in Ireland — that is, the schools which were to 
receive aid from the State. There had been for some 
time in existence a private association called the Kildare 
Place Society, which undertook to establish cheap schools 
of its own, to assist other schools in various parts of the 
country, and to educate teachers. It endeavoured to get 
over the religious difficulty by giving no religious instruc- 
tion in its schools, and only arranging that a portion of 
the Bible should be read, without comment, each day. 
The Government had been in the habit of giving a grant 
to the Kildare Place Society. The society, however, was 
not accepted by the Roman Catholics. They demurred 
to any system of teaching which did not include dis- 
tinct religious instruction, and which did not provide for 
the interpretation of the Scriptures to Roman Catholics 
by ministers of the Roman Catholic Church. Lord 
Stanley now proceeded to transfer the grant formerly 
given to the Kildare Place Society to the Board of 
National Education which he was about to found. In 
the schools under the Board, the children of every 
religious denomination were to have a literary educa- 
tion together, and a separate religious instruction. 
Selections only from the Bible were to be read in school 
time, on two days in the week, and the Bible itself was 
to be read before and after school hours on the other 
days. Thus, those who wished to hear the Bible read 
could hear it by coming before and remaining after 
the regidar hours, and those who desired Biblical in- 
struction only from the ministers of their own church 
could remain away. The objection raised to this scheme 
came, in the first instance, from the Protestant side of 
the controversy. Sir R. H. Inglis declared that the 
Bible was rejected and insulted by any restrictive regu- 
lation, and demanded that the people should have the 



1/4 ^<^ Stockdale Case. — Irish Education. 1845 

Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. The 
attack, however, was not strong enough to prevent the 
Bill from being passed. The House agreed to a vote 
in aid of Lord Stanley's measure. For a while the new 
Board of Education worked very well. Archbishop 
Whately, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and 
Archbishop Murray, the Roman Catholic prelate, were 
alike anxious to make the best they possibly could of 
the advantages placed within their reach, and sincerely 
desirous to spread through Ireland the benefits of a 
genuine national education. They both served upon 
the Education Board, and succeeded in effecting the 
compromise by which a copy of the Bible, with certain 
debatable passages omitted, might be read in schools 
attended alike by Roman Catholic and Protestant chil- 
dren. But the outcry was raised with renewed violence 
from both sides of the field of controversy. Dr. Phill- 
potts, a Protestant prelate, denounced the spending of 
public money on what he called the propagation of the 
Roman Catholic faith. It was complained that monks 
and nuns had been allowed to take charge of education 
in Ireland, and it was said that in one school certain 
Protestant children had been induced to remain and 
witness the eelebration of mass. On the other hand, 
Dr. MacHale, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, 
condemned the compromise Bible, as we may call it, on 
which Dr. Whately and Dr. Murray had agreed, as a 
volume destructive to faith. The controversy, we may 
say, has gone on from that time to this. The difficulty 
of framing a common system of education, which shall 
include those who believe in secular education, and 
those who regard it as dangerous and odious, can 
hardly ever be completely got over. But there can be 
no doubt that, despite all differences and all objections, 



1815-46 The Corn Laws. 175 

the national system of education then founded in Ire- 
land has accomplished very great and valuable results. 
Viewed as a mere teaching system, some of its organisa- 
tions were admirably adapted to convey to children a 
genuine knowledge of the subject, and not to teach 
them to repeat in parrot tones long words to which they 
attached no meaning. The Irish peasant child has 
naturally a taste for instruction, and where the teachers 
were adapted for the work, the schools were always suc- 
cessful in doing some substantial good. At all events, 
whatever modification or rearrangement may be 
adopted, now or at any future time, to meet religious 
scruples on either side of the controversy, it was an 
eventful epoch in the history of Ireland, when a Minis- 
try agreed to establish a great popular system of educa- 
tion which should endeavour to deal fairly with the chil- 
dren of all faiths, and should not try to exalt one re- 
ligious denomination at the expense of another. 



CHAPTER XII. 

FREE TRADE. 

The repeal of the corn laws was one of the greatest 
measures of reform passed in this long and busy period. 
The corn laws were the laws which imposed a duty on 
the importation of foreign grain into England. At one 
time this duty amounted practically to prohibition. In 
181 5, the celebrated Corn Law was passed, which was 
itself moulded on the Corn Law of 1770. By the Act of 
181 5, wheat might be exported upon a payment of 15. per 
quarter customs duty, but the importation of foreign 
grain was practically prohibited until the price of wheat 
in England had reached %os. a quarter, that is to say, 



176 Fre". Trade* 1815-46 

until a certain price had been secured for the grower of 
grain at the expense of all the consumers in this country. 
It was not permitted to Englishmen to obtain their sup- 
plies from any foreign land, unless on conditions that 
suited the English corn-grower's pocket. 

We may perhaps make this principle a little more 
clear, if it be necessary, by illustrating its working on a 
small scale and within narrow limits. In a particular 
street in London, let us say, a law is passed declaring 
that no one must buy a loaf of bread out of that street, or 
even round the corner, until the price of bread has risen 
so high in the street itself as to secure to its two or three 
bakers a certain enormous scale of profit on their loaves. 
When the price of bread has been forced up so high as 
to pass this scale of profit, then it would be permissible 
for those who stood in need of bread to go round the 
corner and buy their loaves of the baker in the next 
street; but the moment that their continuing to do this 
caused the price of the baker's bread in their own street 
to fall below the prescribed limit, they must instantly 
take to buying bread within their own bounds and of 
their own bakers again. This is a fair illustration of the 
principle on which the corn laws were moulded. The 
Corn Law of 181 5 was passed in order to enable the 
landowners and farmers to recover from the depression 
caused by the long era of foreign war. It was " rushed 
through " Parliament, if v/e may use an American expres- 
sion ; petitions of the most urgent nature poured in 
against it from all the commercial and manufacturing 
classes, and in vain. Popular disturbances broke out in 
many places. The poor everywhere saw the bread of 
their family threatened, saw the food of their children 
almost taken out of their mouths, and they naturally 
broke into wild extremes of ang-er. In London there 



1815-46 Protection. lyy 

were serious riots, and the houses of some of the most 
prominent supporters of the Bill were attacked. The 
incendiary went to work in many parts of the country. 
At that time it was still the way in England, as it is now 
in Russia and other countries, for popular indignation to 
express itself in the frequent incendiary fire. At one 
place near London a riot lasted for two days and nights ; 
the soldiers had to be called out to put it down, and five 
men were hanged for taking part in it. 

After the passing of the Corn Law of 181 5, and when 
it had worked for some time, there were sliding scale 
acts introduced, which established a varying system of 
duty, so that when the price of home-grown grain rose 
above a certain figure, the duty on imported wheat was 
to sink in proportion. The principle of all these mea- 
sures was the same. How, it may be asked, could any 
sane legislator adopt such measures ? As well might it 
be asked, how can any civilised nations still, as some 
still do, believe in such a principle ? The truth is, that 
the principle is one which has a strong fascination for 
most persons, the charm of which it is difficult for any 
class in its turn wholly to shake off. The idea is, that if 
our typical baker be paid more than the market price 
for a loaf, he will be able in turn to pay more to the 
butcher than the fair price for his beef: the butcher 
thus benefited will be enabled to deal on more liberal 
terms with the tailor ; the tailor so favoured by legisla- 
tion will be able in his turn to order a better kind of 
beer from the publican and pay a higher price for it. 
Thus, by some extraordinary process, everybody pays 
too much for everything, and nevertheless all are en- 
riched in turn. The absurdity of this is easily kept out 
cf sight where the protective duties affect a number of 
varying and complicated interests, manufacturing, com- 

N 



178 Free Trade. 1815-46 

mercial, and productive. In the United States, for ex- 
ample, where the manufacturers are benefited in one 
place and the producers are benefited in another, and 
where the country always produces food abundant to 
supply its own wants, men are not brought so directly 
face to face with the fallacy of the principle as they were 
in England at the time of the Anti-Corn Law League. 
In America Protection affects manufacturers for the most 
part, and there is no such popular craving for cheap 
manufactures as to bring the protective principle into 
collision with the daily wants of the people. But in 
England, during the reign of the corn law, the food 
which the people put into their mouths was the article 
mainly taxed, and made cruelly costly by the working 
of Protection. 

Nevertheless, the country put up with this system down 
to the close of the year 1836. At that time there was a 
stagnation of trade and a general depression of busi- 
ness. Severe poverty prevailed in many districts. In- 
evitably, therefore, the question arose in the minds of 
most men in distressed or depressed places, whether it 
could be a good thing for the country in general to have 
the price of bread kept high by factitious means when 
wages had sunk and work become scarce. An Anti- 
Corn Law association was formed in London, It began 
pretentiously enough, but it brought about no result. 
London is not a place where popular agitation finds a 
fitting centre. In 1838, however, Bolton, in Lancashire, 
suffered from a serious commercial crisis. Three-fifths 
of its manufacturing activity became paralysed at once. 
Many houses of business were actually closed and aban- 
doned, and thousands of workmen were left without 
the means of life Lancashire suddenly roused itself 
into the resolve to agitate against the corn laws, and. 



1 8 1 5 - 4^ Cob den and Bright. 179 

Manchester became the head-quarters of the movement 
which afterwards accomphshed so much. The Anti- 
Corn Law League was formed, and a Free Trade Hall 
was built in Manchester on the scene of that disturbance 
which we have already described in these pages, and 
which was called the massacre of Peterloo. The leaders 
of the Anti-Corn Law movement were Mr. Cobden, 
Mr. Bright, and Mr, Villiers, Mr. Cobden was not a 
Manchester man. He was the son of a Susser farmer. 
After the death of his father he was taken by his uncle, 
and employed in his wholesale warehouse in the city of 
London. He afterwards became a partner in a Man- 
chester cotton factory, and sometimes travelled on the 
commercial business of the establishment. He became 
what would then have been considered a great trav- 
eller, distinct, of course, from the class of explorers ; 
that is, he made himself thoroughly familiar with most 
or all of the countries of Europe, with various parts of 
the East, and with the United States and Canada. He 
had had a fair, homely education, and he improved it 
wherever he went by experience, by observation, and 
by conversation with all manner of men. He became 
one of the most effective and persuasive popular speak- 
ers ever known in English agitation. He was not an 
orator in the highest sense. He had no imagination 
and little poetic feeling, nor did genuine passion ever 
inflame into fervour of declamation his quiet, argumen- 
tative style. But he had humour; he spoke simple, 
clear, strong English ; he used no unnecessary words. 
He always made his meaning plain and intelligible, 
and he had an admirable faculty for illustrating every 
argument by something drawn from reading, or from 
observation, or from experience. He was, in fact, the 
very perfection of a common-sense talker, a man fit to 



I So Free Trade. 1815-46 

deal with men by fair, straightforward argument, to ex- 
pose complicated sophistries, and to make clear the most 
perplexed parts of an intricate question. He was ex- 
actly the man for that time, for that question, and for 
the persuasive and argumentative part of the great con- 
troversy which he had undertaken. 

Mr. Cobden's chief companion in the struggle was 
Mr. Bright, whose name has been completely identified 
with that of Cobden in the repeal of the Corn Laws. 
Mr. Bright was an orator of the highest order. He had 
all the qualifications that make a master of eloquence. 
His presence was commanding ; his voice was singularly 
strong and clear, and had peculiar tones and shades in 
it which gave indescribable meaning to passages of an- 
ger, of pity, or contempt. His manner was quiet, com- 
posed, serene. He indulged in little or no gesticulation, 
he had a rich gift of genuine Saxon humour. These 
two men, one belonging to the middle class of the north, 
one sprung from the yeomanry of southern England, 
had as a colleague Mr. Charles Villiers, a man of high 
aristocratic family, of marked ability, and indomitable 
loyalty to any cause he undertook. Mr, Villiers for 
some years represented the Free Trade cause in 
Parliament, and Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden did its 
work on the platform. Mr. Cobden first, and Mr. 
Bright after him, became members of the House of 
Commons, and they were further assisted there by Mr. 
Milner Gibson, a man of position and family, an effec- 
tive debater, who had been at first a Conservative, but 
who passed over to the ranks of the Free Traders, and 
through them to the ranks of the Liberals or Radicals. 
Every year Mr. Villiers brought on a motion in the 
House in favour of Free Trade. For a long time this 
motion was only one of the annual performances, which 



1815-46 The Progress of Free Trade. 181 

by an apparently inevitable necessity, have to prelude 
for many yeais the practical movement of any great 
Parliamentary question. Mr. Villiers might have brought 
on his annual motion all his life, without getting much 
nearer to his object, if Manchester, Birmingham, Shef- 
field, Leeds, and other great northern towns had not 
taken the matter vigorously in hand, if Cobden and 
Bright had not stirred up the engergies of the whole 
country, and brought clearly home to the mind of every 
man the plain fact that reason, argument, and arithme- 
tic, as well as freedom and justice, were distinctly on 
their side. 

The Anti-Corn Law League showered pamphlets, 
tracts, letters, newspapers, all over the country. They 
sent lecturers into every town, preaching the same 
doctrine, and proving by scientific facts the justice of the 
cause they advocated. These lecturers were enjoined to 
avoid as much as possible any appeals to sentiment or 
to passion. The cause they had in hand was one which 
could best be served by the clear statement of rigorous 
facts, by the simple explanation of economical truths 
which no sophism could darken, and which no opposing 
eloquence could charm away. The Melbourne Ministry 
fell in 1 841. It died of inanition : its force was spent. 
Sir Robert Peel came into office. Mr. Cobden, who then 
entered the House of Commons for the first time, seemed 
to have good hope that even Peel, strong Conservative 
though he was, might prove to be a man from whom the 
Free Traders could expect substantial assistance. Sir 
Robert Peel had, in fact, in those later years expressed 
again and again his conviction as to the general truth 
of the principles of Free Trade. "All agree," he said 
in 1842, " in the general rule that we should buy in the 
cheapest and sell in the dearest market." But he con- 



1 82 Free Trade. 1815-46 

tended that while such was the general rule, yet that 
various economical and social conditions made it neces- 
sary that there should be some distinct exceptions, and 
he regarded the corn laws and sugar duties as such ex- 
ceptions. It may be mentioned, perhaps, that the corn 
laws had, in fact, been treated as a necessary exception 
by many of the leading exponents of the principles of 
Free Trade. Thus we have to notice the curious fact, 
that while Sir Robert Peel's own party looked -upon his 
accession to power as a certain guarantee against any 
concession to the Free Traders, the Free Traders them- 
selves were, for the most part, convinced that their cause 
had better hope from him than from a Whig Ministry. 

The Free Traders went on debating and dividing in 
the House, agitating and lecturing all over the country, 
for some years without any marked Parliamentary suc- 
cess following their endeavours. An immense and over- 
whelming majority always voted against them in the 
House of Commons. They were making progress, and 
very great progress, but it was not that kind of advance 
which had yet come to be decided by a Parliamentary 
vote. Probably a keen and experienced eye might have 
noted clearly enough the progress they were making. 
The Whig party were coming more and more round to 
the principles of Free Trade. Day after day some Whig 
leader was admitting that the theories of the past would 
not do for the present, and, as we have said, the Tory 
leader had himself gone so far as to admit the justice of 
the general principles of Free Trade. At one point the 
main difference between Sir Robert Peel, the leader of 
the House of Commons, and Lord John Russell, the 
leader of the Opposition, seems to have been nothing 
more than this, that Peel still regarded grain as a neces- 
sary exception to the principle of Free Trade, and Lord 



1815-46 The Irish Famine. 183 

John Russell was not clear that the time had come when 
it could be treated otherwise than as an exception. An 
event, however, over which no parties and no leaders 
had any control, suddenly intervened to hasten the action 
and spur the convictions of the leaders on both sides, and 
especially of the Prime Minister. This was the great 
famine which broke out in Ireland in the autumn of 1845. 
The vast majority of the Irish people had long- depended 
for their food on the potato alone. The summer of 1845 
had been a long season of wet and cold andsunlessness. 
In the autumn the news went abroad that the whole 
potato crop of Ireland was in danger of destruction, if 
not already actually destroyed. Before attention had 
well been awakened to the crisis, it was officially 
announced that more than one-third of the entire potato 
crop had been swept away by the disease, and that the 
disease had not ceased its ravages, but, on the contrary, 
was spreading more and more every day. The general 
impression of those who could form an opinion was that 
the whole of the crop must perish. The Anti-Corn Law 
League cried out for the opening of the ports, and the 
admission of grain and food from all places. Sir Robert 
Peel was decidedly in favour of such a course. The 
Duke of Wellington and Lord Stanley opposed the idea, 
and the proposition was given up. Only three members 
of the Cabinet supported Sir Robert Peel's proposals — 
Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert. 
All the others objected, some because they opposed the 
principle of the measure, and were convinced that, if the 
ports were once opened, they would never be closed 
again, which indeed was probably Peel's own conviction, 
and others on the ground that no sufficient proof had 
yet been given that such a measure was necessary. 
Lord John Russell, almost immediately after, wrote a 



i84 /rf(? Trade. 1815-46 

letter from Edinburgh to his constituents, the electors of 
the city of London, in which he declared that something 
must immediately be done, that it was " no longer 
worth while to contend for a fixed duty," and that an end 
must be put to the whole system of protection, as "the 
blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of 
bitter division among classes, the cause of penury, fever, 
and crime among the people." This letter produced a 
decisive effect on Peel. He saw that the Whigs were 
prepared to unite with the Anti-Corn Law League in 
agitating for the total repeal of the corn laws, and he 
therefore made up his mind to recommend to the Cabi- 
net an early meeting of Parliament, with the view to 
anticipate the agitation which he saw must succeed in the 
end, and to bring forward, as a Government measure, 
some scheme which should at least prepare the way for 
the speedy repeal of the corn laws. 

A Cabinet council was held almost immediately after 
the publication of Lord John Russell's letter, and Peel 
recommended the summoning of Parliament in order to 
take instant measures to cope with the distress in Ire- 
land, and also to introduce legislation distinctly in- 
tended to prepare the way for the repeal of the corn laws. 
Lord Stanley could not accept the proposition. The 
Duke of Wellington was himself of opinion that the 
corn laws ought to be maintained, but at the same time 
he declared he considered good government for the 
country more important than corn laws or any other con- 
siderations, and that he was therefore ready to support 
Sir Robert Peel's administration through thick and thin. 
Lord Stanley and the Duke of Buccleuch, however, de- 
clared that they could not be the parties to any legislation 
which tended towards the repeal of the corn laws. Sir 
Robert Peel did not feel himself strong enough to carry 



1840 PeeVs Conversion. 185 

out his project in the face of such opposition in the 
Cabinet itself, and he tendered his resignation to the 
Queen. The Queen sent for Lord John Russell, but 
Russell's party were not very strong in the country, and 
they had not a majority in the House of Commons. 
Lord John tried, however, to form a Ministry without a 
Parliamentary majority, and even although Sir Robert 
Peel would not give any pledge to support a measure for 
the immediate and complete repeal of the corn laws. 
Lord John Russell was not successful. Lord Grey, son 
of the Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, objected to the 
foreign policy of Lord Palmerston, and thought a seat in 
the Cabinet ought to be offered to Mr. Cobden. Lord 
John Russell had nothing to do but to announce to the 
Queen that he found it impossible to form a Ministry. 
The Queen sent for Sir Robert Peel again and asked him 
to withdraw his resignation. Peel complied, and almost 
immediately resumed the functions of First Minister of 
the Crown. The Duke of Buccleuch consented to go 
on with him, but Lord Stanley held to his resolution and 
had no place in the Ministry. His position as Secretary 
of State for the Colonies was taken by Mr. Gladstone. 
Mr. Gladstone, however, did not sit in Paihament during 
the eventful session when the corn laws were repealed. 
He had sat for the borough of Newark, which was under 
the influence of the Duke of Newcastle, and as the Duke 
of Newcastle had withdrawn his support from the Minis- 
try, Mr. Gladstone did not seek re-election for Newark, 
and remained without a seat in the House of Commons 
for some months. 

Parliament met on January 22, 1846. The Speech 
from the Throne, delivered by the Queen in person, re- 
commended the Legislature to take into consideration 
the necessity of still further applying the principle on 



/86 Free Trade. 1846 

which it had formerly acted, when measures were pre- 
sented " to extend commerce and to stimulate domestic 
skill and industry, by the repeal of prohibitive and the 
relaxation of protective duties." In the debate on the 
Address Sir Robert Peel rose, after the mover and sec- 
onder had spoken and the question had been put from 
the Chair, and at once proceeded to explain the policy 
which he intended to adopt. His speech was long and 
laboured, and somewhat wearied the audience by the 
elaborate manner in which he explained how his opin- 
ions had been brought into gradual change with regard 
to Free Trade and Protection. He made it, however, 
perfectly clear that he was now a convert to Mr. Cob- 
den's opinions, and that he intended to introduce some 
measure which should practically amount to the aboli- 
tion of Protection. It was in this debate, and immedi- 
ately after Peel had spoken, that Mr. Disraeli made his 
first great impression on Parliament. He had been in 
the House for many years and had made many attempts, 
had sometimes been laughed at, had sometimes been 
disliked, and occasionally for a moment admired. But 
it was when he rose immediately after Sir Robert Peel, 
and denounced Peel as one who had betrayed his party 
and his principles, that he made the first deep impression 
on the House of Commons, and came to be considered 
as a serious and influential Parliamentary personage. 
"I am not one of the converts," Mr. Disraeli said, "I 
am perhaps a member of a fallen party." A new Pro- 
tection party was formed almost immediately under the 
leadership of Lord George Bentinck, a man of great 
energy and tenacity of purpose, who had hitherto spent 
his life almost altogether on the turf, who had had almost 
no previous preparation for leadership, or even for de- 
bate, but who certainly, when he did accept the respon- 



1846 The Fall of Peel, 187 

sible position offered to him, showed a considerable ca- 
pacity for leadership and an unwearying attention to his 
duties. 

On January 27, Sir Robert Peel explained his financial 
policy. His intention was to abandon the sliding scale 
altogether, to impose for the present a duty of ten shil- 
lings a quarter on corn when the price of it was under 
forty-eight shillings a quarter, to reduce that duty by one 
shilling for every shilling of rise in price until it reached 
fifty-three shillings a quarter, when the duty should fall 
to four shillings. This, however, was to be only a tem- 
porary arrangement. It was to last but three years, and 
at the- end of that time protective duties on grain were to 
be wholly abandoned. We need not go at any length 
into the history of the long debates on Peel's proposi- 
tions. The discussion of one amendment, which was in 
substance a motion to reject the scheme altogether, lasted 
for twelve nights. The third reading of the Bill passed 
the House of Commons on May 15, by a majority of 
ninety-eight. The Bill went up at once to the House of 
Lords, and at the urgent pressure of the Duke of Wel- 
lington was carried through that House without any seri- 
ous opposition. The Duke made no secret of his own 
opinions. He assured many of his brother peers that he 
disliked the measure just as much as any one could do, 
but he insisted that they had all better vote for it 
nevertheless. Sir Robert Peel had triumphed, but he 
found himself deserted by a large and influential section 
of the party he once had led. Most of the great land- 
owners and country gentlemen of the Conservative party 
abandoned him. Some of them felt the bitterest resent- 
ment towards him. They believed he had betrayed 
them, although nothing could be more clear than that for 
years he had distinctly been making it known to the 



1 88 Free Trade. 1846 

House that his principles inchned him towards Free 
Trade, and thereby leaving it to be understood that, if 
opportunity or emergency should compel him, he would 
be glad to declare himself a Free Trader, even in the 
matter of grain. 

Strange to say, the day when the Bill was read in the 
House of Lords for the third time saw the fall of Peel's 
Ministry. The fall was due to the state of Ireland. 
The Government had been bringing in a Coercion Bill 
for Ireland. It was introduced while the Corn Bill was 
yet passing through the House of Commons. The situa- 
tion was critical. All the Irish followers of Mr. O'Con- 
nell would be sure to oppose the Coercion Bill. The 
Liberal party, at least when out of office, had usually 
made it their principle to oppose Coercion Bills if they 
were not attended with some promises of legislative re- 
form. The English Radical members, led by Mr. Cob- 
den and Mr. Bright, were certain to oppose coercion. 
If the Protectionists should join with these other oppo- 
nents of the Coercion Bill the fate of the measure was 
assured, and with it the fate of the Government. This 
was exactly what happened. Eighty Protectionists fol- 
lowed Lord George Bentinck into the lobby against the 
Bill, in combination with the Free Traders, the Whigs, 
and the Irish Catholic and national members. The divi- 
sion took place on the second reading of the Bill on 
Thursday, June 25, and there was a majority of seventy- 
three against the Ministry. The moment after Sir Robert 
Peel succeeded in passing his great measure of Free 
Trade he himself fell from power. His political epitaph, 
perhaps, could not be better written than in the words 
with which he closed the speech that just preceded his 
fall: " It may be that I shall leave a name sometimes 
remembered with expressions of goodwill in those places 



1846 The Sugar Duties 189 

which are the abode of men whose lot it is to labour and 
to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow — a 
name remembered with expressions of goodwill when 
they shall recreate their exhausted strength with abun- 
dant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no 
longer leavened with a sense of injustice." 

With the fall of the principle of the protection in corn 
may be said to have practically fallen the principle of 
Protection in this country altogether. That principle was 
a little complicated in regard to the sugar duties and to 
the navigation laws. The sugar produced in the West 
Indian colonies was allowed to enter this country at rates 
of duty much lower than those imposed upon the sugar 
grown in foreign lands. The abolition of slavery in our 
colonies had made labour there somewhat costly and dif- 
ficult to obtain continuously, and the impression was that 
if the duties on foreign sugar were reduced, it would 
tend to enable those countries which still maintained the 
slave trade to compete at great advantage with the sugar 
grown in our colonies by that free labour to establish 
which England had but just paid so large a pecuniary 
fine. Therefore the question of Free Trade became in- 
volved with that of free labour ; at least, so it seemed to 
the eyes of many a man who was not inclined to support 
the protective principle in itself. When it was put to him, 
whether he was willing to push the Free Trade principle 
so far as to allow countries growing sugar by slave labour 
to drive our free grown sugar out of the market, he was 
often inclined to give way before this mode of putting the 
question, and to imagine that there really was a collision 
between Free Trade and free labour. Therefore a certain 
sentimental plea came in to aid the Protectionists in re- 
gard to the sugar duties. Many of the old anti-slavery 
party found themselves deceived by this fallacy, and in* 



J go Free Trade. 1846 

clined to join the agitation against the reduction of the 
duty on foreign sugar. On the other hand, it was made 
tolerably clear that the labour was not so scarce or so 
dear in the colonies as had been represented, and that colo- 
nial sugar grown by free labour really suffered from no in- 
convenience except the fact that it was still manufactured 
on the most crude, old fashioned, and uneconomical 
methods. Besides, the time had gone by when the 
majority of the English people could be convinced that a 
lesson on the beauty of freedom was to be conveyed to 
foreign sugar-growers and slave-owners by the means of 
a tax upon the products of their plantations. Therefore 
after a long and somewhat eager struggle, the principle 
of Free Trade was allowed to prevail in regard to sugar. 
The duties on sugar were made equal. The growth of 
the sugar plantations was admitted on the same terms 
into this country, without any reference either to the soil 
from which it had sprung orto the conditions under which 
it was grown. It had for a long time been stoutly pro- 
claimed that the abolition of slavery must be the de- 
struction of our West Indian colonies. Years had 
elapsed and the West Indian colonies still survived. 
Now the cry of alarm was taken up again, and it was 
prophesied that although they had got over the abolition 
of slavery they never could survive the equalisation of 
the sugar duties. Jamaica certainly had fallen greatly 
away from her period of temporary and factitious pros- 
perity. Jamaica was owned and managed by a class of 
proprietors who resembled in many ways some of the 
planters of the States of America farthest south — of the 
States towards the mouth of the Mississippi. They lived 
in a kind of careless luxury, mortgaging their estates as 
deeply as they possibly could, throwing over to the 
coming year the superabundant debts of the last, and 



165 7-1 ^49 The Navigation Laws. 191 

only managing to keep their heads above water so long 
as the people of England, by favouring them with a 
highly protective system, enabled them still to compete 
against tho:,e who grew sugar on better principles and 
more economical plans. The whole island was given 
over to neglect and mismanagement. The emancipated 
negroes took but little trouble to cultivate the plots of 
ground they had obtained, and were quite content if they 
could scratch enough from the soil to enable them barely 
to live. Therefore Jamaica did at a certain time fall far 
below the level of her former seeming prosperity. 
The other islands had been better managed. Their 
estates were less encumbered by debt, and they passed 
through each successive crisis without sustaining any 
noticeable injury. In most of these islands the product 
increased steadily after the emancipation of the slaves. 
The negroes then began to work earnestly, and education 
grew not greatly but distinctly amongst all classes. 
Jamaica, the most unfortunate among the islands, has 
been constantly the scene of little outbursts of more or 
less serious rebellion. As the late Lord Chief Justice of 
England observed in a charge on a famous occasion, 
"The soil of the island might seem to have been drenched 
in blood.'* But these disturbances, or insurrections, or 
whatever thev may be called, did not increase in number 
after the abolition of slavery and after the equalisation of 
the sugar duties, but, on the contrary, decreased. During 
our time only one considerable disturbance has taken 
place in Jamaica, and in former years such tumult was of 
frequent recurrence. In the West Indies we have, there- 
fore, the most severe test to which the principle of Free 
Trade could well be subjected. It is not too much to say 
that in the more fortunate of these islands it has esta- 
blished its claim, and that even in the least fortunate 



192 Free Trade, 1849 

no evidence whatever has been given that the people 
would have been in any way the better off if the old 
system had been retained. 

The navigation laws had, too, a certain external 
attraction about them which induced many men, not 
actually Protectionists, to believe in their necessity. The 
principle of the navigation laws was to impose such 
restrictions of tariff and otherwise as to exclude foreign 
vessels from taking any considerable part in our carry- 
ing trade. The law was first enacted in Oliver Crom- 
well's day, at a time when the Dutch were our rivals on 
the waters, and when it was thought desirable to repress, 
by protective legislation, the energy of such experienced 
seamen and pushing traders. The navigation law was 
modified by Mr. Husldsson in 1823, but only so far as 
to establish that which we now know so well as the prin- 
ciple of reciprocity. Any nation which removed restric- 
tions from our merchant marine was favoured by us 
with a similar concession. The idea also was, that these 
navigation laws, keeping foreigners out of our carrying 
trade, enabled us to maintain always a supply of sailors 
who could at any time be transferred from the merchant 
marine to the Royal Navy, and thus be made to bear 
their part in the defence of the country. Of course the 
shipowners themselves upheld the navigation laws, on 
the plea that, if the trade were thrown open by the with- 
drawal of Protection, their chances would be gone ; that 
they could not contend against the foreigners upon 
equal terms; that their interests must suffer, and that 
Great Britain would in the end be a still severer sufferer, 
because, from the lack of encouragement given to the 
native traders and the sailors, England would one day 
or another be left at the mercy of some strong power 
which, with wiser regulations, would keep up her pro- 



1837 Chartis77i. 193 

tective system and with it her naval strength. Never- 
theless, the shipowners, and the Protectionists, and those 
who raised the alarm cry about England's naval de- 
fences, were unable to maintain their sophisms in the 
face of growing education, and of the impulse given by 
the adoption of Free Trade. In 1849 ^^^ navigation 
laws were abolished. We believe there are very few 
shipowners who will not now admit that the prosperity 
of their trade has grown immensely, in place of suffering 
from the introduction of the free trade principle in navi- 
gation as well as in corn and sugar. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

REFORM WITHSTANDS REVOLUTION. 

While all these reforms were going on, England was 
not without revolutionary throbbings. The movement 
which we call Chartism was, for a while, one that seemed 
likely to be dangerous. It began. at a great Radical 
meeting held at Birmingham a few weeks after the coro- 
nation of Queen Victoria. It sprang into existence 
chiefly in consequence of a formal declaration made by 
the leaders of the Liberal party in Parliament, that 
they did not propose to push reform any further. We 
have already shown how the Reform Bill passed by Lord 
Grey and Lord John Russell left the working classes 
almost entirely out of the franchise. It took away the 
electoral monopoly from the aristocracy, and transferred 
it to a combination of aristocracy and plutocracy. It not 
only did not confer political emancipation on the working 
classes, but in many places it abolished the peculiar 
franchise which enabled the working man to be a voter. 
In some places, such, for example, as the town of Preston, 

O 



194 Reform withstands Revolution. 1837-39 

in Lancashire, there was a system of fancy franchise 
which almost amounted to universal suffrage. The 
Reform Bill eifaced all these peculiarities of suffrage, 
admitted the middle classes, and the middle classes 
only, to a share of the law-making power, and shut out 
the working men altogether. This was the more exas- 
perating to the working classes, because the Reform 
Bill had been carried in the face of so much resistance, 
mainly by virtue of their support and their strength. 
Almost immediately after the opening of the first Par- 
liament of Queen Victoria's reign, a Radical member 
of the House of Commons moved, as an amendment 
to the Address, a' resolution in favour of the Ballot and 
of a shorter duration of Parliaments. No more than 
twenty members supported this amendment, although it 
contained only the recommendations which men like 
Lord Durham a few years before were accustomed to 
propose. During the discussion which took place. Lord 
John Russell declared distinctly against all attempts to 
re-open the reform question. The disappointment felt 
throughout the country, and especially amongst the 
working classes, was very great. They had been in 
hopes that the Reform Bill, which they helped to pass, 
was to be the means by which much greater changes 
more directly affecting their condition were to be intro- 
duced into the Parliamentary system. To their surprise 
they now heard one of the great leaders of reform de- 
claring that to push the movement any further would be 
a breach of faith towards those who helped to carry 
Lord Grey's Bill. Lord John Russell was doubtless 
right enough in thinking the moment highly inopportune 
for pushing the reform principle any further. Forward 
movements in political reform are always, in a country 
like this, followed by a season of reaction. The House 



1837 Chartism. 195 

of Commons was already beginning to feel the influence 
of this operation. But, at the same time, it was hard 
that working men, who had helped so stoutly to make 
the reform movement a success, should be told bluntly 
that its influence was to stop short of the only measures 
which could in any way affect their condition. A few 
Liberal members of Parliament, who professed strong 
Radical opinions, held a conference shortly afterwards 
with some of the leaders of the working men, and it 
appears that at this conference the document which was 
afterwards known as the People's Charter was drawn up 
and agreed to. O'Connell, it is said, gave it its name. 
"There is your Charter," he said to the Secretary of 
the Working Men's Association ; " agitate for that, and 
never be content with anything else." 

The Charter was not, after all, a very formidable 
document. It insisted on six "points," as they were 
called. Manhood suffrage, or as it was then called, 
universal suffrage (but its promoters never thought of 
the franchise for women), annual Parliaments, vote by 
ballot, abolition of the property qualification for the elec- 
tion of a Member of Parliament, payment of Members, 
and the division of the country into equal electoral 
districts, were the " points " of the famous Charter. 
Around the agitation thus got up, there gathered all the 
discontented amongst all classes of working men. Some 
men of great ability and great earnestness, some men of 
more ability than earnestness, took the leadership of the 
movement. It had its orators, its poets, its prophets, its 
martyrs. Misery and discontent were, however, its 
strongest inspiration. The Anti-Corn Law rhymes of 
Ebenezer Elliott will show how what he calls the Bread 
Tax became identified, and justly, in the minds of work- 
ing men, with the whole system of political and economi- 



196 Reform withstands Revolutio7i, 1841-44 

cal legislation which was kept up for the benefit of a few. 
For them the blessings of the British Constitution seemed 
to mean only incessant exhausting work, miserable wages, 
and scanty food. The Government endeavoured tD 
repress Chartist meetings and Chartist disturbances by' 
force. They prosecuted some of the spokesmen andi 
leaders of the Chartist movement, and Henry Vincent, a 
man of good character and a certain amount of eloquence, 
was imprisoned at Newport in Wales. His imprison- 
ment was the cause of the famous attempt of Frost, 
Williams, and Jones, which, beginning with a scheme 
merely for the release of Vincent from jail, grew into 
a sort of insurrection. A conflict took place between the 
Chartists and the soldiery and the police, in which the 
Chartists were dispersed with a loss of eight or ten men 
and fifty or sixty wounded. Frost and his companions 
were tried on a charge of high treason, were found 
guilty, and sentenced to death, but the sentence was 
commuted to one of transportation for life. Their 
conviction did not put a stop to the Chartist agitation. 
On the contrary. Chartism seemed to have received a new 
life and a new direction since the failure of the attempt 
at Newport. A new race of Chartists began to spring up. 
The convictions of Frost and his companions stirred up 
sympathy amongst men who, up to that time, had not 
even had their attention turned to the movement. 

About the same time that the Chartist disturbances 
were going on in this country the repeal agitation was 
spreading over Ireland. The repeal movement was 
started by Daniel O'Connell, with the object of dissolving 
the tie which bound two countries into one system of 
Government. O'Connell was a man of extraordinary 
eloquence, energy, and ability. He was as shrewd in 
council as he was commanding in speech. He has hardly 



1842-44 The Repeal Agitation. 197 

ever had a rival as a popular orator. The universal 
opinion of his time pronounced him to be the greatest 
platform speaker of that day, and although he entered 
the House of Commons late in life, when he was almost 
midway between fifty and sixty, he yet achieved a repu- 
tation in that highly-cultured assembly scarcely inferior, 
if inferior at all, to the fame he had won out of doors. 
It was mainly through his energy and determination that 
Catholic emancipation was at last forced upon a reluc- 
tant Ministry. After Catholic emancipation he was dis- 
appointed with the course the Whigs were taking, and 
he set himself to organize an agitation for the repeal of 
the legislative union between England and Ireland. The 
Act of Union, whatever its objects might have been, 
was undoubtedly brought about by measures and means 
over which, to use Carlyle's words, "moralities not a few 
must shriek aloud." The most audacious and wholesale 
system of bribery had been employed to accomplish the 
Union. Peers were made and votes were bought as 
rapidly and as openly as if there was no need even for 
pretending to disguise the purpose of these transactions. 
Lord Cornwallis, who conducted the negotiations at the 
time in Ireland, again and again expressed to his friends 
his disgust and loathing for the work he had to do. It is 
therefore easy to understand that O'Connell found strong 
feeling enough against the Union already in the minds of 
his countrymen to admit of his easily rousing them up 
into a fury against it. He organized a great system of 
monster meetings. He may be regarded as the author 
and inventor of that practice of modern agitation which 
has now taken possession of the whole English-speaking 
world. He gave something of a military appearance to 
the crowds who attended his meetings. They marched 
in martial array with bands and banners. It is not likely 



198 Reform withstands Revolution. . 1842-44 

that O'Connell ever intended anything like an armed rc- 
belHon ; but it is probable that he was anxious to make 
the Government believe that he had the force at his back 
whenever he chose to call it into action. He had an 
entire command of the peasantry, of the priests, and of the 
artisans in the towns, and of most of the Catholic traders 
and shopkeepers of whatever class in the towns also. 
Nobody in Ireland, before his time, had anything like the 
same command of the whole national public opinion of 
the country. Had he but held up his hand at any 
moment he could have made a rebellion. This, how- 
ever, was not O'Connell's policy. He hoped, by a fre- 
quent display of popular strength, to force the Govern- 
ment into the concession of the claim which he made. 
It would not have suited his purpose either to begin a 
rebellion or to have it distinctly known that he never in- 
tended to begin one. The Government, at last taking 
alarm at his menacing demonstrations, prohibited one of 
his monster meetings. O'Connell acted with great 
promptitude. He instantly issued a proclamation of his 
own advising the people to disperse in quiet. Always 
obedient to his command the immense crowds which had 
been pouring into the place of meeting broke up quietly 
and went to their homes again. But the course taken 
by O'Connell was fatal to his popularity. With the 
young men especially it wore away his influence. Most 
of them fully believed that he intended an armed 
struggle at some time or another, and when they found 
now, by his own positive assurance and by his own 
action, that he had no such purpose their interest in the 
movement faded away. His judgment, of course, was 
much shrewder and better than theirs, but their youth- 
ful enthusiasm could not abide disappointment. O'Con- 
nell was afterwards prosecuted for seditious speaking, 



1844 Trial of O^ Connell. 199 

tried, found guilty, and sentenced to fine and imprison- 
ment. He appealed to the House of Lords against the 
sentence, on the ground that jury lists had been prepared 
in such a manner as to insure his conviction. A majority 
of the House of Lords affirmed that the judgment ought 
not to be sustained. The occasion was remarkable 
because, among other reasons, it marked a new chapter 
in the practice of the House of Lords. The constitution 
of the House of Lords recognised at that time, and for a 
long time afterwards, no difference between the law lords 
and the other peers in voting on any question of appeal. 
The lay peers indeed hardly ever exercised their right 
to vote. But they had the right to do so and there were 
some cases in which they had put it into practice and 
voted on appeal just as if they had been masters of the 
law. If the lay lords had exercised their right in the 
case of O'Connell, it is certain that the decision of the 
court below would have been maintained. No one had 
ever denounced the House of Lords with more bitterness 
and virulence than O'Connell. On the other hand, it is 
certain that the sincere opinion of a majority of the 
House of Lords was that O'Connell well deserved his 
condemnation and his sentence. The moment was 
critical. Nothing could possibly have had a more evil 
effect on public opinion in Ireland than the decision of a 
question purely of law by the votes of peers who were 
not lawyers, and against a man who had made himself 
their most conspicuous personal enemy. Lord Wharn- 
clifife suddenly arose and appealed to the wiser judgment 
and calmer temper of his brother peers. He begged of 
them not to take a course which might leave it open to 
O'Connell and to everyone to say that political and 
personal feeling had governed a judicial decision of the 
House of Lords. Just before Lord Wharncliffe spoke 



200 Reform withstands Revolution. 1844 

one lay peer at least had declared that he would insist 
upon his right to vote. Several others gave it to be 
understood that they were determined to follow the ex- 
ample. Lord Wharncliffe's timely interposition had a 
happy effect. All the lay peers tacitly acknowledged the 
justice of his advice. They withdrew from the House 
and left the decision, according to the usual fashion, in 
the hands of the law lords. The majority of these, as 
we have said, were against the judgment of the court 
below, and O'Connell and his companions were set at 
liberty. The lay peers never again voted on a question 
of judicial appeal, so long as the appellate jurisdiction 
of the House of Lords was still allowed to remain in 
their hands after the traditional and anomalous fashion. 

The appeal agitation faded. It gave way, however, 
only to a more impassioned and more energetic associa- 
tion. This was the Young Ireland confederation. A 
number of eager and passionate young men, weary and 
impatient of O'Connell's policy, broke away from him 
shortly before his death, and founded an association of 
their own. It gradually and rapidly glided into some- 
thing like rebellion. It would probably have gone that 
way in any case, because there could be no succession 
to O'Connell's movement which would not be an anti- 
climax unless it assumed the open form of rebellion. 
But the Young Ireland movement, like the Chartist 
movement in England, was inflamed with new life and 
passion and fire by the outbreak of the French Revolu- 
tion of 1848. 

The year 1848 was a year of revolution. The flame 
which broke out in France spread over the whole Conti- 
nent. From Madrid to Moscow, from Paris to Constan- 
tinople, the movement was felt. Thrones were coming 
down in all directions. Whole systems were crashing 



1848 Young Ireland. 201 

like old houses in some ancient quarters of a city in a 
night of storm. The revolutionary impulse began in 
France, but of the fatuity with which Louis Philippe 
and his Minister were striving to carry restriction and 
repression too far. The fall of Guizot and of Louis 
Philippe with him was distinctly owing to the cause to 
which Sir Robert Peel ascribed it. Peel heard in the 
House of Commons from Mr. Joseph Hume the news of 
the fate of the French Monarchy, and quietly remarked 
that that was what came of trying to govern a country 
on too narrow a basis of representation. M. Guizot, a 
man of great ability and sound judgment as an historian, 
was singularly perverse and narrow when he came to 
deal with actual systems and living men. It was his 
conviction that he could manage to govern France by 
means of a restricted principle of representation, so that 
the country should have all the appearance of a repre- 
sentative system while in reality it was ruled by the 
Minister and the Court. He pushed his doctrine too far, 
and the result was a popular uprising, which complete 
concession might have satisfied in time, but which, com- 
plete concession being denied, broke out before long into 
revolution. Louis Philippe fled from Paris and became 
an exile in England. It was said and believed for a long 
time that he owed his fall from the throne to his reluct- 
ance to use forcible measures for the repression of the 
popular rising. Recent publications, however, and re- 
cent accounts of conversations with M. Thiers, show 
that there is no truth in the report which ascribed to the 
late King of the French such a chivalrous or quixotic 
sentiment of humanity. He would have suppressed 
the revolution by any exertion of military force and at 
any cost of human life if he had only seen his way in 
time. 



202 Reform withstands Revolution. 1848 

After the proclamation of the Republic in France, the 
revolutionary spirit flew over the whole of Europe. It 
broke out in Prussia, in Austria, in Italy — almost every- 
where. The popular rising in Austria proved so powerful 
that for a time it was thought there was little hope of the 
then reigning Emperor being able to maintain his place 
in Vienna. Venice proclaimed herself a Republic, and 
under the leadership of the noble and pure-hearted 
Daniel Manin, held her own for no inconsiderable time. 
Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia, was compelled to 
put himself at the head of the popular movement in Italy, 
although he had himself at onetime used stern measures 
for the repression of a popular uprising. The Austrians 
were for a while virtually dispossessed of the Lombard 
provinces. Pope Pius IX., who had at first shown a 
strong inclination to become the leader of the national 
movement against the Austrians and foreigners of all 
kinds, suddenly drew back before the danger of blood- 
shed and the difficulty of dealing with a great revolu- 
tionary crisis, and the immediate result was that revolu- 
tion broke out in Rome itself. The Pope had to take 
refuge in Gaeta, in the dominions of the King of Naples, 
and a Republic was proclaimed in Rome under a trium- 
virate, with Joseph Mazzini at its head. A rising took 
place in Berlin, and the streets of the city were drenched 
in blood. A revolt broke out in Baden, and was sup- 
pressed not without some difficulty by the troops of the 
King of Prussia. Hungary, which had long been mur- 
muring against the restriction of her ancient liberties 
and the abolition of her time-honored constitution by 
Austria, rose in a gigantic rebellion against the house of 
Hapsburg. On many great battle-fields the Hungarians 
met the Austrians, and were the victors ; and it may 
be almost taken for graated that Hungary would have 



1848 The Year of Revolutions. 203 

asserted successfully her entire independence of Austria 
at that time, but that Nicholas, the Emperor of Russia, 
seeing his own frontiers threatened by the rush of the 
revolutionary movement, intervened on behalf of Austria, 
and by means of his enormous forces succeeded in de- 
feating the Hungarians in the field, and in finally com- 
pelling their submission. Their dictator, Kossuth, took 
refuge at first in Turkey, and afterwards came to England. 
The King of the Belgians escaped the storm of revolution 
by the courage with which he confronted it. In the 
words of Hamlet, he may be said to have " taken arms 
against a sea of troubles,'' but not arms in the military 
sense. He encountered the difficulty by announcing 
from his palace windows that he had accepted the Crown 
of Belgium as the free gift of the Belgian people, and 
that he was ready at any moment to put it down and to 
leave the country if the Belgian people no longer wished 
him to retain his place. The result was what might 
have been expected from an attitude so chivalrous and 
kingly. The Belgians insisted on his retaining the Crown ; 
and he continued to be, to his death, one of the most 
popular sovereigns in Europe. 

The movement on the Continent proved to be prema- 
ture. It was repressed in every single instance, with the 
exception of France alone, and even there the repression 
was but put off for a year or two. The movement in 
Northern Italy was after a while completely crushed 
out. Charles Albert was defeated hopelessly and finally 
at Novara, and he shortly afterwards thought it wise 
to abdicate his throne in favor of his son Victor 
Emmanuel, and retired to exile in Portugal, where he 
died. We have described the fate of the Hungarian 
movement. The French Government sent troops to 
Rome, and afterwards intervened against the Revolution 



204 Reform withstands Revolution, 1848 

and for the restoration of Pope Pius. Venice was re- 
captured by the Austrians, and Manin became an exile. 
For no inconsiderable time it seemed as if reaction had 
obtained complete control of the continental peoples, 
and as if the day of constitutional freedom was indefi- 
nitely postponed. 

Meanwhile, how did England fare ? England's history 
during all that crisis is a striking illustration of the 
manner in which the principle of reform acts as a rampart 
against revolution. The flame of continental revolt 
spread itcelf to this country and to Ireland. In England 
the Chartist movement sprang up into fierce, and what 
seemed at onetime very dangerous activity. In Ireland, 
the young men, clever, brilliant, sincere, young men for 
the most part, who had seceded from the leadership of 
O Connell, began open preparations for an armed rebel- 
lion. The Chartist movement burst like a bubble, on 
Kennington Common, on April 10, 1848. The Young 
Ireland party were hurried into a premature outbreak in 
the summer of the same year, and it was suppressed 
almost before the Irish population in general knew that 
it had begun. Neither in England nor in Ireland did 
the disturbance call for a single charge of cavalry. The 
explanation of all this is clear. It is not that there were 
no grievances in England and Ireland to justify the 
strongest protest. There were still grievances that 
v/ould have been intolerable if men could have supposed 
that they were likely to last. There were grievances 
which would well have warranted a revolutionary up- 
rising against them, if it could have been supposed that 
there was no other way of getting rid of them. But all 
reasonable men knew that they could be got rid of; that 
only time and patience and the working of public opinion 
were needed for their removal. The reforms already 



1848 Kenningion Common. 205 

accomplished were guarantee of further reforms, and the 
people knew that they could afford to wait. 

The reform rnovement, which was conducted to prac- 
tical statesmanship by Lord Grey and Lord John Russell, 
went on, making its influence felt in all directions. 
Religious equality, commercial freedom, popular educa- 
tion, the opening of universities to all sects, the extension 
of the suffrage — these are some of the operations of the 
principle which was put into force when the Reform Bill 
of 1832 was passed. There have of course been intervals 
of reaction, but the progress of reform has been steady 
on the whole. Since 1848 we have never heard even a 
whisper of domestic disturbance in England, Every 
reasonable man knows that the work of pacification in 
Ireland is only a question of just and generous legisla- 
tion. 

Perhaps we cannot bring our account of this epoch of 
reform more fittingly to a close than with the death of 
Sir Robert Peel. On the morning of June 29, 1850, Sir 
Robert Peel left the House of Commons shortly before 
four o'clock. He went home for rest, but it could only be 
rest for a brief interval. He had to go to a meeting of 
the commissioners of the Great Exhibition at twelve. 
He went to the meeting and bore a part in the discussion. 
He returned home for a short time and then went out 
for a ride in the park. As he was riding up Constitution 
Hill, he stopped to talk to a lady, the daughter of a 
friend. His horse suddenly started and flung him off. 
Peel clung to the bridle. The horse fell with its knees 
on his shoulders. He received such injuries as to render 
his recovery impossible. He lingered for two or three 
days, sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, and 
he died toward midnight on July 2. His death closed 
appropriately a great period of reform. Peel was a re- 



2o6 Reform withstands Revolution. 1850 

former forced into reform. He had not accepted it of 
his own impulse. We find him through the greater part 
of his career resisting every proposal for change in the 
beginning, and yet becoming himself identified with some 
of the greatest changes in the political history of the 
time. Lord Beaconsfield speaks of him as a great 
member of Parliament, and uses the phrase in a manner 
which seems to imply that in Lord Beaconsfield's opinion 
he was that and that alone. But Sir Robert Peel was 
undoubtedly a great minister of state and even a great 
statesman as well. He was a profoundly conscientious 
man. His reason and conscience were alike active and 
alike exercised command over him. He was one of the 
small number of statesmen who are willing to renounce 
their dearest opinions, the traditions of their youth, the 
prejudices of their manhood, if their reason can only be 
convinced that other opinions are just. Sir Robert Peel's 
great change on the question of the corn laws does as 
much credit to his intellect as to his conscience. He 
could not close his mind against the arguments of the 
free traders, and his conscience would not allow him to 
shape his political course in any other way but as his 
reason directed. Sir Robert Peel was not indeed a man 
of original genius. His greatest triumphs were accom- 
plished by the adaptation of other men's ideas. No two 
men, perhaps, could seem to be less alike than Peel and 
Mirabeau, and yet Peel and Mirabeau resembled each 
other in this, that each had a marvellous power of assimi- 
lating the ideas of others and putting them into action 
in practical politics. Peel was a great administrator and 
a great Parliamentary debater, and he had so thorough 
an understanding of all the principles of finance that 
he first and last won for the conservative party the 
repute of being the sound economists and trustworthy 



1850 Death of Sir Robert Peel. 207 

financiers of the country. Before his time and after his 
time, Whig or Liberal Governments have always claimed, 
and been allowed, the credit of financial skill and success. 
Sir Robert Peel, in his prime, carried the sceptre of 
finance fairly over to the Conservative ranks, and kept it 
there until his death. He was a man of austere cha- 
racter and somewhat chilly temperament, awkward and 
shy in manner. People thought him proud where he was 
only reserved. He was really full of warmth and generous 
feeling, but his sensitive character led him to disguise 
his emotions, and this contrast between his strong feel- 
ings and his want of demonstrativeness, gave him a 
certain artificial manner which seemed merely awkward. 
His real genius and character came out in the House of 
Commons and in debate. He was not an orator of the 
highest class. He had little passion and almost no 
imagination, but his style was clear, strong, and flowing. 
His speeches are full of various argument and appropriate 
illustration. They were the very perfection of good 
sense and high principle, clothed in the most impressive 
language. At the time of his death Peel was still in the 
fullest possession of all his faculties, both of mind and 
body. He was little more than sixty-two years of age, 
and it seemed almost certain that he had a great career 
still before him. He would probably have become Prime 
Minister again, or else he would have filled a post still 
more important than that occupied for many years by the 
Duke of Wellington, that of impartial adviser to the 
Sovereign, no matter what party happened to be in 
power, trusted alike by the Sovereign, by parties, and by 
the people. He would have filled this place better than 
the Duke of Wellington did, for although no man could 
be more simply sincere than was the Duke in his patriotic 
desire to serve his Sovereign, Peel had a mind so far 



2o8 A Survey, Political and Social. 1850 

superior in flexibility and in strength, that he would have 
known, what the Duke of Wellington did not always 
know, how to reconcile devotion to the Sovereign with 
loyalty to the people, and the recognition of new ideas 
and new political conditions. If we are not to class Peel 
amongst great ministers of the first rank, it is, perhaps, 
only because, during his time, England was not put to 
any trial of the kind that calls out the greatest faculties 
of statesmanship, and wins for men a name with the 
foremost in history. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A SURVEY, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 

England's imperial responsibilities grow greater year 
by year with the continued increase of her colonial pos- 
sessions. She has, however, wisely provided against the 
difficulty of governing far distant colonies from a central 
point in Westminster, by gradually allowing to each of 
her great colonies a system of self-government. Not 
long after the accession of Queen Victoria, Lord Durham, 
sent out as commissioner to endeavour to reorganise 
the affairs of Canada after a rebellion there, succeeded 
in laying the foundations of a system of self-government, 
which has gradually been expanding until it has taken in 
nearly all the British possessions in North America under 
one federation. The colonies in Australasia have also 
been gradually brought up to this system of self-govern- 
ment. New South Wales, the oldest of the group, came 
into constitutional and political life about the time at 
which this history closes. Victoria was separated from 
New South Wales in 1851, and brought her constitutional 
system into working order a few years after. The other 
colonies followed by degrees. The discovery of gold in 



1850 Australia. 209 

Australia was an event of immense importance both to 
the colony and to England. It sent a sudden rush of 
emigration from all countries out to Victoria, and the 
result was, that in a very few years the great and flourish- 
ing city of Melbourne, grew up on a shore that had pre- 
viously been only a landing place for men pushing their 
way inland to cultivate farms and raise cattle and sheep. 
Gold was discovered in Australia in 185 1, and had been 
discovered in California three or four years before. 
Since then gold has been found in many other of our 
colonies, and always with the same result of directing a 
sudden emigration to the place, and leading to the birth 
of great communities and the building of large towns. 
Independently, however, of the discovery of gold emi- 
gration to the colonies had greatly developed during the 
years which we have surveyed. The English language 
thus spreads all over the world, and promises before long 
to be the tongue most common amongst civilized nations. 
To the great Indian Empire enough of attention had not 
been paid for many years by statesmen and the public 
at home. Our public men here knew but little of the 
struggle of races and conflict of interests which were 
going on in India. Territories were annexed, rulers 
were deposed, and successions were cut off rather heed- 
lessly from time to time, by Indian viceroys obeying 
perhaps the spur of immediate expediency rather than 
keeping their eyes fixed upon the responsibilities of the 
future. The English people were therefore taken wholly 
by surprise when the great Indian Mutiny broke out, a 
few years after the period at which we have now arrived, 
and brought about, as one result, the reorganisation of 
the system of government in India and the abolition 
of the old East India Company. 

About the time of Peel's death the Eastern Question 

P 



2IO A Survey, Political and Social. 1850 

began to occupy the attention of Europe. What is the 
Eastern Question ? It is, in plain words, the question. 
What is to become of the dominions now occupied by the 
Turkish Government in Europe and in Asia. The Turks 
settled themselves in Europe in the fifteenth century. 
They captured Constantinople, overran a great part of 
the south-west of the Continent, and pushed their inva- 
sion so far as to threaten Vienna, the Capital of Austria. 
They obtained what seemed for a long time a secure 
holding of all, or nearly all, the dominions of the later 
Roman Empire, that is to say, all the Empire which had 
its capital in Constantinople. They brought into Europe 
a political and social system entirely out of harmony 
with western civilisation. While the Turks were strong, 
all the powers of Europe were banded together against 
them, and would have joined eagerly in any movement 
which seemed likely to drive the Ottoman back into 
Asia. But when, of later years, Turkey began to grow 
weak, when her internal affairs became disorganised, 
when province after province began to show itself im- 
patient of her rule, then a new condition arose, which 
not only prevented some of the Western Powers from 
desiring to see the Turks driven out of Europe, but even 
induced them to unite for the purpose of maintaining 
them in their possessions. This new condition was the 
growth of the Russian Empire. Russia was becoming 
powerful as the Turks began to grow weak. She was 
eager to extend her dominions to the south. The dread 
which many modern statesmen felt, was that Russia 
would make herself mistress of all the provinces now 
held by the Turks in Europe, and thus become a far 
greater danger to other European Powers than the 
Turkish Empire in its crippled modern condition could 
possibly be. Therefore a school of statesmen sprang 



1850 The Eastern Question, 211 

into existence, who maintained that it was part of the 
national duty and interest of England to maintain that 
Empire, and another school came up almost equally- 
strong, whose doctrine was that the power of the Sultan 
must inevitably crumble to pieces, and that we ought to 
make every preparation for its decay, by encouraging 
the European provinces to form themselves into separate 
and independent states, English interests, too, were 
further concerned in the condition of the Turks because 
c*" the relationship which Egypt holds at once to the 
Sultan and to England. It is of the utmost importance 
for England that no foreign power should get possession 
of Egypt, because Egypt is a necessary part of our high 
road to India. So long as the Sultan holds Egypt, and 
the Sultan himself is to a certain extent under the pro- 
tection of England, we are sure Egypt is safe. The 
school of statesmen who hold that it is essential for our 
interests to maintain the Ottoman Empire, make it a 
part of their argument, that if we do not maintain it, we 
should have to occupy Egypt ourselves, or to submit to 
its being occupied by some foreign power, which might 
perhaps some day stand between us and our way to 
India. 

The year 1850 did not seem one of good augury for 
the progress of free political institutions on the European 
continent. The spirit of the national party of Hungary 
appeared to be crushed. Foreign occupation and inter- 
vention were once more triumphant over the greater part 
of Italy. The hopes which German populations had 
been forming of a United Germany, under the leadership 
of Prussia, appeared to be blighted. Prussia had fallen to 
be a mere dependent or creature now of Austria and now 
of Russia. The manner in which Prussian politics were, 
made subservient to the intrigues of Russia filled the 



212 A Survey, Political and Social. 1850 

heart of many a patriotic German with anger and despair, 
and contributed not a little to the causes and influences 
which afterwards brought about the Crimean War. In 
the domestic Government of almost all the continental 
States an iron despotism, a rigid police system reigned 
supreme. In France the sudden establishment of the 
Republic, with its weaknesses and errors, had only served 
to open a way for Louis Napoleon, nephew of the great 
Napoleon, and for a long time an exile in England, to get 
himself elected President ; and from the chair of the 
President he made his way before long to an Imperial 
throne. In August 1850, Louis Philippe, formerly King 
of the French, died at his residence in England. A few 
days later the President Louis Napoleon, at a banquet in 
Cherbourg, in France, was hailed with cries of " Long 
live the Emperor." A month later Louis Napoleon was 
reviewing the troops on the plain of Satory, near Paris. 
As some of the cavalry regiments passed by, they 
shouted first " Long live the President," and afterwards 
*' Long live the Emperor." Already men began to look 
forward with something like certainty to the change 
which was about to take place in the Government of 
France, and which only a little later was accomplished 
by the memorable coup d'etat oi December 2, 1851. 

The wave of popular revolution seemed to have 
wholly subsided. Autocratic rule appeared to have a 
new charter of life conferred upon it. Not since the 
meeting of the Allied Sovereigns at Verona, and the 
publishing of the Holy Alliance, had arbitrary authority 
seemed so securely established all over continental 
Europe. Yet we have only to look forward a little way 
in order to see how the very same sort of reaction which 
followed the Holy Alliance, followed the re-establish- 
ment of personal authority in Europe. Before very long 



1850 Revived Autocracy. 213 

Hungary had quietly secured her independence. The 
Austrians had to give up Lombardy in 1S59 ^^^^ Venetia 
in 1866. Italy gradually became united into one king- 
dom. Prussia made herself the predominant power in 
Germany. Austria was forced to recede altogether from 
her place in the German system. The French Empire 
fell in 1870, and a Republic was established in its place. 
Meanwhile, nothing could be more remarkable than the 
contrast between the condition of England and that of 
the Continent. In England there had been no political 
uprising of any kind which could call for a serious re- 
action. The Chartist disturbances and the momentary 
outbreak of revolution in Ireland had passed away with 
comparatively little harm done. The progress which 
political life had been steadily making in these islands, 
and the certainty that what further reform was yet 
needed was to be accomplished best by peaceful means 
and by patience, had had their inevitable effect. While 
continental Europe was once more broken up by revolt 
and reaction, England was pursuing steadily the path of 
peaceful reform. While the Government of Austria were 
still executing some of their Hungarian rebels, and were 
chafing and fuming because Kossuth, the Hungarian 
leader, had escaped from their power ; while the Presi- 
dent of the French Republic was silently arranging for 
his coup cTetat, England, under the inspiration of the 
late Prince Consort, was busily engaged in preparing for 
the first Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations, 
to be held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. 

It was not, however, in political affairs alone that these 
islands had been making steady progress during all this 
time. Indeed, it would not be possible for any people to 
make any advance in political reform without making 
social and moral progress as well ; or perhaps it should 



214 A Survey i Political and Social.' 1850 

rather be said that without the growth of improvement 
in inteUigence and in moral feeling, the improvement in 
politics could not take place. It would be impossible for 
anyone to survey the lengthened period which we have 
been describing without being struck by the steady 
advance made in the social condition of England. We 
have shown how many great reforms were made in the 
criminal laws, how the severity of punishments was miti- 
gated, and how the mitigation of the penal code was 
assisted further by legislation intended to make life less 
hard upon the poor, and, therefore, to give less temptation 
to crime. The factory legislation, the laws for the regu- 
lation of mines and collieries — these were improvements 
thoroughly in the spirit of the age. Society itself im- 
proved. At the period with which this history begins the 
duelling system was still a fashionable institution. Not 
only military men and hot-tempered youth settled their 
quarrels with the pistol, but grave statesmen and elderly 
lawyers had recourse to the same means of finishing a 
dispute. The Duke of Wellington fought a duel with 
Lord Winchilsea ; Sir Robert Peel was making arrange- 
ments to fight a duel with O'Connell when the interference 
of friends brought the dispute to a conclusion ; Mr. Dis- 
raeli challenged one of O'Connell's sons because 
O'Connell himself declined to fight. It is in great 
measure to the influence of the late Prince Consort that 
the decay and final abandonment of the duelling system 
in this country is to be ascribed. Some singularly tragic 
and painful quarrels, futile in their original purpose, had 
drawn public attention directly to the hideousness of the 
practice, and the intervention at such a timely moment 
of the Prince Consort, and the use he made of his influ- 
ence with the military authorities, had much to do in 
helping forward the great moral and social reform. The 



1850 The Duelling System. 215 

barbarous amusements which during the reign even of 
William IV. were still common among all classes, such 
as bull-baiting and cock-fighting, have now ceased to be 
the pastime of even the rudest and most ignorant. We 
do not pretend to say that all this advance has been made 
without some corresponding reaction, but, taken on the 
whole, a marked improvement in the moral tone of 
society, from the highest to the lowest, is distinctly to be 
noted, and might be proved almost by the test of arith- 
metical figures. The numerous improvements which have 
been made in the drainage of cities, in the ventilation of 
houses, in the providing of gardens and open spaces for the 
poor children of large towns to play in ; all these beneficent 
changes could not fail to produce a decided effect upon the 
general health of the population. The shocking habits 
of drunkenness which at one time pervaded all classes 
of men in this country are now confined mainly to the 
uneducated and to the poor, whose rigorous lot and almost 
incessant toil makes temptation not easy to resist. It 
may, moreover, be confidently hoped that in time a vice 
which has faded away from all the more educated classes 
of society will leave society altogether, and that the spread 
of education amongst the very poorest will bring sobriety 
with it. 



EPOCHS OF HISTORY. 



"A Series of concise and carefully prepared volumes on special 
eras of history. Each is devoted to a group of events of such 
importance as to entitle it to be regarded as an epoch. Each 
is also complete in itself, and has no especial connection with 
the other members of the series. The works are all written 
by authors selected by the editor on account of some especial 
qualifications for a portrayal of the period they respectively 
describe. The volumes form an excellent collection, especially 
adapted to the wants of a general reader." — CHARLES KENDALL 
ADAMS, President of Cornell Uttiversity. 

*'The ' Epochs of History ' seem to me to have been prepared with 
knowledge and artistic skill to meet the wants of a large number 
of readers. To the young they furnish an outline or compen- 
dium which may serve as an introduction to more extended 
study. To those w^ho are older they present a convenient sketch 
of the heads of the knowledge which they have already acquired. 
The outlines are by no means destitute of spirit, arid may be 
used with great profit for family reading, and in select classes 
or reading cluhs.^—JVOAH POUTER, President of Yale College. 

•' It appears to me that the idea of Morris in his Epochs is strictly 
in harmony with the philosophy of history— namely, that 
great movements should be treated not according to narrow^ 
geographical and national limits and distinction, but uni- 
versally, according to their place in the general life of the 
world. The historical Maps and the copious Indices are 
welcome additions to the volumes."— Z?/jA^/ JOHN F. HURST, 
Ex-President of Drew Theological Seminary. 

"The volumes contain the ripe results of the studies of men who 
are authorities in their respective fields." — The Nation. 

"To be appreciated they must be read in their entirety ; and we 
do no more than simple justice in commending them earnestly 
to the favor of the studious public." — The New York World. 

The great success of the series is the best proof of its general 
popularity, and the excellence of the various volumes is further 
attested by their having been adopted as text-books in many of 
our leading educational institutions, including Harvard, Cornell, 
"Wesleyan, Vermont, and Syracuse Universities; Yale, Princeton, 
Amherst, Dartmouth, Williams, Union, and Smith Colleges; and 
many other colleges, academies, normal and high schools. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

ENGLAND AND EUROPE AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS 

SUBSEQ UENT TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 

Edited by 

Edward E. Morris. 

Seventeen volumes, i6mo, with 74 Maps, Plans and Tables. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $z.oo. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $17.00. 

^THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES— England and Europe 

in the Ninth Century. By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M. A. 

THE NORMANS IN EUROPE— The Feudal System and England 

under Norman Kings. By the Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A. 

^ THE CRUASDES. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A. 

7 THE EARLY PLANTAGE NETS— Their Relation to the History 
of Europe : The Foundation and Growth of Constitutional 
Government. By the Rev. Wm. Stubbs, M.A. 

^ E DWA R D 1 1 1 . By the Rev. W. Warburton, M. A. 

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK— The Conquest and 
Loss of France. By James Gairdner. 

THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. By Frederic 
Seebohm. "With Notes on Books in English relating to the 
Reformation. By Prof. George P. Fisher, D.D. 
r THE EARLY TUDORS. Henry VII. ; Henry VIII. By Rev. C. E. 

MOBERLY, M.A. 

«• THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By the Rev. M. Creighton, M.A. 
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 1618-1648. By Samuel Rawson 

Gardiner. 
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION; and the First Two Stuarts, 

1603-1660. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 

-^THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western Europe. By the 
Rev. Edward Hale, M.A. 

' THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 
7 THE EARLY HANOVERIANS— Europe from the Peace of Utrecht to 
the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 
H FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. By 

F. W. Longman. 
^ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FIRST EMPIRE. By William 
O'Connor Morris. With Appendix by Andrew D. White, 
> LL. D. , ex-President of Cornell University. 

7 THE EPOCH OF REFORM, 1830-1850. By Justin McCarthy. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

GREECE AND ROME, AND OF THEIR RELATIONS TO 

OTHER COUNTRIES AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS. 

Edited by 

Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M.A. 

Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, ^zx.oo. 

TROY— ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE. By 
S. G. W. Benjamin. 

THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By the Rev. G. W. Cox. 

THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE— From the Flight of Xerxes to the 
Fall of Athens. By the Rev. G. W. Cox. 

THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES. By Charles 
Sankey, M.A. 

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE— Its Rise and Culmination tc the 
Death of Alexander the Great. By A. M. CURTEIS, M.A. 

The Jive volumes above give a connected and complete history 
of Greece from the earliest times to the death of Alexander. 

EARLY ROME— From the Foundation of the City to its Destruc 
tion by the Gauls. By W. Ihne, Ph.D. 

ROME AND CARTHAGE— The Punic Wars. By R. Bosworth 
Smith, M.A. 

THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA. By A. H. Beesly, M.A. 

THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. Charles 
Merivale, D.D. 

THE EARLY EMPIRE — From the Assassination of Julius Csesar 
to the Assassination of Domitian. By the Rev. W. Wolfe 
Capes, M.A. 

THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES— the Roman Empire of the 
Second Century. By the Rev. W. Wolfe Cape«, M.A. 

The six volumes above give the History of Rome from the 
founding of the City to the death of Marcus A melius Antoninus, 



Just Published 

A NEW VOLUME IN THE SERIES. 

THE EARLY TUDORS—HENRY VII.. HENRY VIII. 
By the Rev. C. E. Moberly, M.A., late Master in 
Rugby School. 

With Four Maps. One vol., i6mo, $i.oo. 
PRESS COMMENTS. 

"A marvel of clear and succinct brevity and good historical judgment. 
There is hardly a better book of its kind to be named." — The Independent. 

"The volume, as a whole, gives a very complete and satisfactory relation 
of the chief events in the history of the early Tudors ; it is concise, scholarly, 
and accurate. On the epoch of which it treats, we know of no work which 
equals it." — Nevj York Observer. 

" The book is ably written, and entirely free from sectarian bias," — New 
York Titnes. 

" One of the most interesting and valuable of the whole series. The 
author has evidently had access to original sources, and succeeds in making 
his narrative fresh in matter, while it is fluent and pleasing in style." — Chicago 
Standard. 

" ' The Early Tudors ' is well written, and holds its own well in a series of 
which the average is by no means of tne ordinary importance merely." — 
Boston Courier. 

" One of the most interesting volumes of the admirable collection of 
monographs to which it belongs. The book is in every respect most largely to 
be commended." — Charleston News and Courier. 

" Prof Moberly's sketch possesses great freedom, simplicity, and concise- 
ness. The account moves easily from the beginning, giving each crisis its due 
prominence without making the approach formal and heavy, and avoiding 
very skillfully, in the face of much condensation, an effect of crowding."— 
Brooklyn Times. 

" As in the other books of the series, compactness and simplicity of style 
have been followed in order to compress the greatest quantity of material within 
the smallest space compatible with the clear and thorough setting forth of the 
subject. This volume shows wide reading and thoughtful study on the part of 
the author, who here presents a remarkably clear and instructive picture of 
the condition of England under the two Henrys," — Boston Saturday Evening 
Gazette. 



*** The volumes in this series are for sale by all booksellers, or 
wil be sent J postpaid, on receipt of price, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 



A New Edition^ Library Style. 



^§F j^isforg of Ploinp, 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO THE PERIOD OF ITS DECLINE 

By Dr. THEODOR MOMMSEN. 

Translated, with the author's sanction and additions, by the Rev. W. P. Dickson, Re^itis 
Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of Glasgow, late Classical Examiner o{ 
the University of St. Andrews. With an introduction by Dr. Leonhard Schmitz, and 
a copious Index of the whole four volumes, prepared especially for this edition. 

REPRINTED FROM THE REVISED LONDON EDITION. 
Four Volumes, crown 8vo, gilt top. Price per Set, $8.00. 



Dr. Mommsen has long been known and appreciated through his re- 
searches into the languages, laws, and institutions of Ancient Rome and 
Italy, as the most thoroughly versed scholar now living in these depart- 
ments of historical investigation. To a wonderfully exact and exhaustive 
knowledge of these subjects, he unites great powers of generalization, a 
vigorous, spirited, and exceedingly graphic style and keen analytical pow- 
ers, which give this history a degree of interest and a permanent value 
possessed by no other record of the decline and fall of the Roman Com- 
monwealth. "Dr. Mommsen's work," as Dr. Schmitz remarks in the 
introduction, *' though the production of a man of most profound and ex- 
tensive learning and knowledge of the world, is not as much designed for 
the professional scholar as for intelligent readers of all classes who take 
an interest in the history of by-gone ages, and are inclined there to seek 
information that m^ guide them safely through the perplexing mazes of 
modern history." 

CRITICAL NOTICES. 

** A work of the very highest merit ; its learning is exact and profound ; its narrative full 
of genius and skill ; its descriptions of men are admirably vivid. We wish to place oa 
r:cord our opinion that Dr. Mommsen's is by far the best history of the Decline and F..'ll 
f)f the Roman Commonwealth." — London Times. 

" This is the best history of the Roman Republic, taking the work on the whole — the 
juhor's complete mastery of his subject, the variety of his gifts and acquirements, his 
graphic power in the delineation of national and individual character, and the vivid interest 
which he inspires in every portion of his book. He is without an equal in his own sphere.'- 
'- Edittbiirgh Review. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New YoiiK. 



A New Edition, Library Style, 




? IjisfOPg of (JpFPfF. 

By Prof. Dr. EENST OUETroS. 

Tijinslated by Adolphus William Ward, M. A., Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cai» 
bridge, Prof, of History in Owen's College, Manchester. 

UNIFORM WITH MOMMSEN'S HISTORY OF ROME, 
rive volumes, crown 8vo, gilt top. Price per set, $10.00. 



Curtius's History of Greece is similar in plan and purpose to Mommsen's 
History of Rome^ with which it deserves to rank in every respect as one of 
the great masterpieces of historical literature. Avoiding the minute de- 
tails which overburden other similar works, it groups together in a very 
picturesque manner all the important events in the history of this king- 
dom, which has exercised such a wonderful influence upon the world's 
civilization. The narrative of Prof. Curtius's work is flowing and ani- 
mated, and the generalizations, although bold, are ^philosophical and 
sound. 

CRITICAL NOTICES. 

" Professor Curtius's eminent scholarship is a sufficient guarantee for the trustworthiness 
of his history, while the skill with which he groups his facts, and his effective mode of narrat- 
ing them, combine to render it no less readable than sound. Prof. Curtius eveiywhere 
maintains the true dignity and impartiality of history, and it is evident his sympathies are 
on the side of justice, humanity, and progress" — London Athenteutn. 

" We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius's book better than by saying that it may 
be fitly ranked with Theodor Mommsen's great work." — London Spectator. 

"As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no previous work is comparable to 
the present for vivacity and picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of 
statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which enrich the literature of the 
age." — N. Y. Daily Tribune. 

" The History of Greece is treated by Dr. Curtius so broadly and freely in the spirit oi 
the nineteenth century, that it becomes in his hands one of the worthiest and most instruct- 
ive branches of study for all who desire something more than a knowledge of isolated facts 
for their education. This translation ought to become a regular part of the accepted course 
of reading for young men at college, and for all who are in training for the free political 
life of our country." — N. Y. Evening Post. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New Yor» 



Manual of Mythology 

FOR THE USE OF 

SCHOOLS, ART STUDENTS AND GENERAL READERS, 

^OUNLED ON THE WORKS OF PETISCUS, PRELLER; 
AND WELCKER. 

By ALEXANDER S. MURRAY, 

Department of Greek and Koman Antiquities, British Museum. 

With 45 Plates on tintec? paper, representing: more tb.an 00 
llytholog^ical Subjects. 



RKPRINTED FROM THE SECOND REVISED LONDON EDITION. 



One volume, crown 8vo, $2.25. 



There has long been needed a compact, manageable Manual o( 
Mythology, which should be a guide to the Art student and the general 
reader, and at the same time answer the purposes of a school text-book. 
This volume which has been prepared by the Director of the Department 
of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, upon the basis 
of the works of Petiscus, Preller, and Welcker, has had so extensive a 
sale in the English edition, as to prove that it precisely supplies this want. 
This American edition has been reprinted from the latest English edition, 
and contains all the illustrations of the latter, while the chapter upon 
Eastern Mythology has been carefully revised by Prof. H"^, D, Whitney 
if Yale College. 

N. B. — Teachers wishing to examine this work with a view 
t^ introducing it as a text-book, will have it sent to them, by 
>v:rwarding their address and $1.35. 



•** The above book for sale by all booksellers, or ivill be stMt, Jfost or excess 
•Jt^rget faid^ u^on rt.eij>t of the price by the publishers, 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SQM.c;. 

7^3 AND 74^ UkOAUVVAV. N»?'*' V^rk, 



The Standard Edition of Gladstone's Essays. 




Fanings of JPasI^ Sfhps. 



nv 
The Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE. 



Seven Volumes, 16mo, Cloth, per volume, $1.00, 



The extraordinary scope of Mr. Gladstone's learning — the wonder ol 
his friends and enemies alike — and his firm grasp of every subject he 
discusses, make his essays much more than transient literature. Their 
collection and publication in permanent shape were of course certain to 
be undertaken sooner or later ; and now that they are so published with 
the benefit of his own revision, they will need little heralding in England 
or America. 

What Mr. Gladstone has written in the last thirty-six years — the period 
covered by this collection — has probably had the attention of as large an 
English-speaking public as any writer on political and social topics ever 
reached in his own life-time. The papers which he has chosen as of 
lasting value, and included here under the title of Gleanings of Pas: 
Years, will form the standard edition of his miscellanies, both for hh 
present multitude of readers, and for those who will study his writings 
Uter. 



Vol. i. The Throne, and the Prince Consort; 
The Cabinet, and Constitution. 

Vol. II.— Personal and Literary. 

Vol. III.— Historical and Speculative. 

Vol. IV.— Foreign. 

., .' w." r Ecclesiastical. 
Vol. VI. ) 

Vol. VII.— Miscellaneous. 

*^*Tke above books for sale by all booksellers, or ivill be sent, ffrepaid, up-Tt. 
r«eeij(>t of J>rice, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 






;h^ 









.i 






•{ 



